The Convergence of All Things
by instant dragon
Summary: The Doctor and Bill are summoned to UNIT and soon find themselves swept up in an inter-dimensional mega-crisis. Set during Season 10 between Thin Ice and Knock Knock.
1. Chapter 1

The characters of Doctor Who are the property of the BBC. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

What attracted Bill Potts to the Doctor was the mystery surrounding him.

"If there's one thing you are, Bill, it's curious. You just can't leave anything alone, can you?"

That was a frequent refrain Bill heard from her foster mum, Moira, whom she lived with in a small flat in Bristol. When she got the job in the cafeteria at university, Bill told herself, _It's just a gig. I can work the café while I figure out what's next._

Naturally, Moira had to add her slightly drunken advice.

"Why don't you just sign up for some classes, then? Can't hurt, cannit? Mind like yours? You never know, Bill. Maybe you'll like it. But then again, you've never really stuck to anything, have you?"

But that was the problem. Bill _hated_ school. Her entire academic career was a struggle. School was just so dreary. Bill's teachers were dull. She got more out of her discussions with the head master, whom she saw frequently, than she did in any of her courses. It was everything she could do to finish sixth form and get her diploma, a year behind her classmates. She would have given up except that she didn't want to prove Moira right. The cold hearted bitch.

University was different, though, as Bill quickly discerned. It was filled with people who _wanted_ to be there. As she served students during lunch and dinner, she heard snippets of conversation about classes. Professors. Bands. Dating. College life. It all sounded so sexy.

Bill started visiting the pub near campus, and found herself making friends with a number of students. While considered a "townie," which carried it's own stigma, Bill quickly blended in with the nerdier faction of students her age. Her natural intelligence and geekiness made up for her lack of enrollment at uni.

Over the first weeks of the fall semester, she heard about a mysterious professor who called himself "The Doctor" and taught an array of subjects, from physics to ancient history. His classes had long waiting lists. Bill's friends always talked about what outrageous thing the Doctor said that day. From where Bill sat, the things they called outrageous sounded brilliant.

Finally, she decided she needed to check it out for herself. The first time she snuck into one of his lectures, the topic was string theory. The hall was packed. She sat near the door in case she was found out and had to leave.

The lecture was everything she hoped for. The Doctor entered the room through a door in back of the podium several minutes after the official start time. The buzz of conversation ended abruptly and was replaced by the sounds of textbooks and laptops opening. His clothing was outlandishly formal, Bill decided, closer to Victorian era high society than 21st century Bristol.

He launched into the topic as if picking up an ongoing conversation after a brief interruption. Bill didn't try to understand the subject matter, which sounded like a chain of scientific terms delivered in another language, perhaps Swahili, with a Scottish accent. There were no slides. No reference to textbook pages, either, though several students around Bill paged through their books, searching for an anchor.

She let the discourse wash over her like a warm tide. While she didn't know anything about string theory except for references to it in the many sci-fi books and movies she devoured from the age of seven on, when the Doctor talked about spacetime and multiple dimensions, Bill had an overwhelming sense of connection to the universe. To spacetime. To everything, really. Of being incredibly important and significant, while at the same time inconsequential and small. In her head, she said, _Yes, that's it! That's exactly right. I get you!_

Bill made for the door when he gave an assignment and the class broke into teams to work it out. On her short walk from the lecture hall to the cafeteria, She struggled to capture the substance of her epiphany. While she couldn't pinpoint the exact topic or phrase, that feeling of everything being connected lingered.

Bill returned the next week, and the week after, always sitting in the back, always leaving if there was a group activity. She thought maybe the Doctor noticed her once or twice. She dreaded the moment when he would call on her to answer a question, and always breathed a sigh of relief when he passed her over.

Gradually, the subject matter started making sense. Bill began stopping in at the library after the dinner shift. She allowed herself an hour on the Internet, taking the later bus home, exploring what she found about things that interested her in the Doctor's lectures. _It's just a hobby, really. Something to pass the time,_ she told herself. She was single again, and things were miserable at home with Moira. String theory was a nice distraction.

This routine carried on until the mid-term break. As she left the cafeteria after her last shift before the break, she found a strange looking man waiting for her. He was white, short, chubby, and wore thick glasses. His clothes looked a little unconventional. He wore a colorful wool hat and coat against the autumn chill.

"Miss? Excuse me, but are you…" he glanced at something that was scribbled on the back of his hand in black ink. "Bill Potts?"

Her foster-Mum piped up in the back of her head about the many things that could go wrong when talking to strange men who knew your name and shouldn't.

"Yes, that's me. What's it to you?" Bill didn't mean for it to come out as cross as it sounded.

"Erm, you have an appointment with the Doctor. I'm Nardole. I'm – his assistant."

"What Doctor?" Bill's memory check for recently scheduled doctor's appointments took just a moment. "You mean _the_ Doctor?"

"Yes, that's the one."

"What's his name, anyway? And why's he wanting to meet with me?"

Nardole ignored her questions and turned north, inclining his head to indicate that Bill should follow. She heard a curious creaking sound when he did that. The odd man flinched, as if something pained him slightly.

"His office is right around the corner. We'll be there in a tick."

 _You're so busted, Potts,_ she thought, as she fell in step beside the strange man with a strange name. _Nardole. What kind of name is that?_

That meeting was the beginning of what was next for Bill Potts. Never in her wildest dreams did she envision a future where she would partner up with an ancient being from another planet who would mentor her and take her on grand adventures through space and time. But that's exactly what happened. And it was _amazing_.


	2. Chapter 2

_Time is not absolute. The distinction between past, present, and future is but a stubborn illusion._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

Of course it was the humans. Again. Silly primates. When would they ever learn?

The Doctor knew the answer was never. He had seen the first humanoids emerge awkwardly from the dense jungles of the African continent on that little blue planet in a remote spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, still more ape than human, living together in loose family groups. He'd seen them use tools, discover fire, develop language, and invent their first gods. He had also seen them forge weapons, kill their first enemies and plan their first wars.

He had also been far into the future, when humankind was spread across the galaxy and creeping into the next, forming alliances and trade agreements with many of the species they encountered along the way, while in some cases enslaving others and exterminating still others.

No, they never did learn.

And that was why the Doctor was currently in 21st century Earth, in a military lorry, in transit to the Unified Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) Headquarters in London under armed guard. Again. This definitely wasn't his first rodeo.

Unfortunately, this _was_ the first time his travelling companion and pupil, Bill Potts, Earth girl, seller of chips at uni, had ever been in a situation like this. The poor lass was terrified.

Someone who had just met Bill would have no idea she was scared out of her wits, but they had been in enough tight spots together by now that the Doctor could see the telltale signs. He maneuvered his plasticuffed arms over to his right so he could give her equally manacled hand a squeeze. _Trust me. We'll be fine._ He wished his young companion had the requisite telepathic synapses to hear his reassurance.

Kate Lethenbridge-Stewart was still acting Chief Science Officer at UNIT, and the Doctor was fairly confident that when they arrived there she would affect their release. After all, unless he was deposed and no one notified him, he was still technically the president of Earth. But, then again, upon the occasion that Kate made him aware of his planetary leadership status, she also had him sedated, chained to a dolly and loaded onto the presidential aircraft like a piece of luggage.

Nardole was safely back at uni, likely in the Tardis, unaware that the Doctor and Bill were no longer on the university grounds and perhaps in need of a rescue. Unlike young miss Potts, Nardole did have a rudimentary telepathic ability, though the Delloran cyborg was unaware of it.

Over the past decade or so, in the spirit of experimentation and out of sheer boredom, the Doctor had been periodically sending Nardole progressively more complex telepathic communications. Sadly, the results were mixed. The Doctor wasn't sure if Nardole was right now suffering from an odd yet overwhelming compulsion to look up and set the coordinates for UNIT HQ, or perhaps just experiencing an annoying headache. The Doctor hoped for the former.

The lorry approached the UNIT HQ security gates. The driver spoke briefly with one of the two guards, who raised the barrier so they could drive through.

Bill seemed to have forgotten about the guns trained on her. Currently, her eyes were glued to the small portside window, from which she could see the vast quasi-military complex.

The Doctor was fond of his new friend, Bill, for that very reason. One minute she could be scared out of her skin and the next swallowed up by her own curiosity.

He'd noticed her at the beginning of the term. She always took the seat by the door in the last row of the lecture hall. While the Doctor's classes were large, he knew right away she was not on the rolls. He spent most of fall term pretending he didn't notice her while actually observing her closely.

Finally, he decided she would make for an excellent distraction. He only intended to take her on as a pupil, but then, as often happened to people who spent time with the Doctor, Miss Potts got swept up in an adventure.

"Doctor, do you think the…"

"No talking." The anonymous guard's tone was both assertive and impersonal. Bill closed her mouth, sentence unfinished.

The lorry drove through the open bay doors of an airplane hangar. Kate awaited them with an equally impressive armed escort. The Doctor and Bill exited the lorry via the tailgate.

"Doctor, how good of you to come." Lethbridge-Stewart was no stranger to sarcasm.

"How could I not, Kate. Good to see you, as always."

The blonde chief science officer looked good, though age and stress of the job had made inroads on her face since the Doctor had last seen her. He cast his mind back, trying to estimate how long it had been for her. His timeline jumped around too much to keep track of such things, but he estimated it had been nine Earth years since their last meeting. Kate would be well into her forties.

"This is Bill Potts, a friend of mine." Bill bobbed her head and offered a nervous smile.

"Bill, this is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, chief science officer for the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. UNIT, for short."

"Pleased to meet you." Kate eyed Bill but did not respond.

"Doctor, we have a situation. A very dire one. You didn't respond to our messages, so I had no choice but to have you brought in."

Curses. Nardole had said yesterday that some new communications had come through on the TARDIS console.

"What has UNIT gotten itself into this time?" Kate's manicured eyebrows did that funny thing where they tried to bunch together in a scowl.

"Honestly, Doctor! You always make it sound like we're these warmongers set out to stir up trouble, and it's just not true. Historically, we've had more alien incursions because of you than anything else." The Doctor had nothing to say to that. Bill looked at him pointedly.

"Sergeant, unbind them." The Sergeant's team freed their wrists. The Doctor rubbed the red marks on his arms to get circulation back. He noticed Bill doing the same.

"Follow me. We're going to meet with Osgood in the lab. She has something you'll want to see."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:**

I hope you are enjoying the story. My plan is to update at least weekly, and keep it as canon as possible, given it's set in the current season and we don't know how that's going to unfold. That's a plan, though, not a promise - strange things can happen when writing this stuff! Reviews are always appreciated.

* * *

 _Imagination is more important than knowledge._

-Albert Einstein

 **Chapter 3**

"Meteoroids."

The Doctor studied the image on the LCD monitor. According to Petronella Osgood, UNIT scientist, _and one hot lady, if a bit too old for me,_ Bill thought, the image was a projection of a lead-lined quarantine room.

"Are you sure? Those don't look like meteoroids." The Doctor looked down his nose at Osgood. Bill could tell he was intrigued.

"I know. They're too uniform, and the composition is all wrong. We just don't know what else to call them, at the moment."

"Maybe, 'really weird green round things?'" Bill offered, trying to be cute. She earned a pointed look from both the Doctor and Osgood.

"They were first detected from the International Space Station by a crew of Japanese and American Astronauts, who initially reported them as space junk. After reviewing the video footage, though, they reclassified them as meteoroids.

"From the footage, astrophysicists at NASA confirmed an estimated three hundred densely packed small spherical objects moving towards Earth at 45 km/second. There were no known comets in proximity that might have left a debris trail. The working hypothesis is that they originated in either the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud and were cast out by some kind of impact."

"That sounds plausible," The doctor said, still studying the artifacts on the screen. Bill moved in for a closer look.

They were uniformly round and smooth, and a little smaller than a billiard ball. There were ten of them, by Bill's count, laid out in a metal tray.

"The swarm was picked up by a number of satellites and monitored for several hours. At the time, NASA predicted they would burn up on impact with our atmosphere and never reach land. But when they entered our atmosphere they did not incinerate. They did decelerate to 11 km/second, as would be expected from drag force in our atmosphere."

Kate picked up the narrative, and Osgood busied herself at the laptop, bringing up an animation showing a map of the world and a close-up on Africa.

"NASA issued a meteor shower alert for the African continent based on the projected trajectory, which plotted potential impacts in the Sahara desert. There were multiple sightings from the ground as the objects moved through the lower atmosphere, with reports of impacts. Thankfully, no people or structures were damaged.

"CalTech dispatched a small crew of researchers, who were joined by a team of geologists from Ghana University, to recover as many of the objects as possible for study. There were thirty people in all on the search team."

Osgood rejoined the conversation, still working at the computer.

"They recovered 110 of the objects. Naturally, everyone was fascinated. Everyone on the scene handled them in some way or another. They all traveled in the utility vehicle with them back to the staging area in Sudan. Of that recovery crew, all have gone missing about 36 hours after exposure."

"Missing? What do you mean, missing?"

"We'll get to that shortly." The Doctor's scowl did nothing to convince Kate to address his question now.

"The meteoroids were loaded into the cargo bay of a military aircraft and flown to the Jet Propulsion Lab at CalTech, in California. This was before anyone noticed something was amiss with the recovery team.

"The objects arrived safely 20 hours later, though the pilot was slow to respond to ground control directions about runway approach. He actually landed the plane on the wrong runway, narrowly missing another aircraft. At the time of the landing, the recovery team disappearances had already begun, but word was slow to trickle back to CalTech.

"Once on the ground, the team that received the plane and its cargo noted that the pilot and crew members were behaving erratically and detained them. Then, a few hours later, word of what happened to the recovery team came through. The pilot and crew were quarantined in a military hospital."

"How were they behaving strangely?"

"They seemed to be hallucinating. When they first arrived at the airbase, the hallucinations were mild and interspersed with periods of normalcy. But they grew progressively worse and more frequent, until communication was no longer possible. Osgood, show them the video. This is Lieutenant Colonel Xavier Hernandez, the pilot."

Osgood queued up the file as requested and they all returned their attention to the screen. The video appeared to be from a CCTV camera mounted in the corner of a hospital room with the lens focused on the bed. The patient appeared to be in the throes of delirium. He was flailing his arms about, as if warding off an attacker. Osgood cranked up the volume. Bill's skin broke out in gooseflesh when she heard a blood-curdling scream followed by barely understandable words.

"Please don't! Don't pull me back! Please! This isn't real! Please stop!"

And suddenly, the man in the bed wasn't there anymore.

Bill blinked and looked again, but he was still gone. The Doctor looked equally surprised.

"That's – fascinating. Play it again?" Osgood dutifully replayed the video for the Doctor. After watching it several times, he waved a hand at Kate to continue the narrative.

"Finally, UNIT was called in. We sent a detail out to investigate the meteoroids and interview the surviving airmen. I sent two of our finest Captains. They were trained for situations like this. They secured and transported ten of the objects to our lab here in London. They were very careful, and yet one of them was exposed somehow. Captain Alfred Blake. We quarantined him when he started behaving oddly."

"Has this one vanished?"

"Yes – about two hours ago, while you were en route here from Bristol."

"That's unfortunate."

Bill glared at the Doctor, and then said "I'm sorry for your loss."

"He was a good man," Osgood offered, obviously missing the serviceman. Kate did not show any emotion.

"Captain Blake did do something unusual right before he vanished. While talking with the physician, he started hallucinating. When he looked at the doctor, it was like he saw someone or something else. He was clearly terrified. He picked up his mobile and took a number of pictures of the doctor and the room before the orderlies restrained him and confiscated his phone. He just flashed out of existence right out from under them." Kate locked eyes with the Doctor. "We have a clip of that, too, but I think you can view that one on your own, Doctor. We'll give you access to everything we have."

"Did anyone look at the pictures on his mobile?" Bill asked. The Doctor smiled at her.

Kate shook her head. "It's password protected. Our data security team is working on it now."

"Bring that to me." The Doctor held up his sonic.

"Consider it done."

"Is there anything else?"

"We have an even bigger problem. This morning, satellites picked up another swarm of small objects near earth, following a similar trajectory. Given the deadly nature of the first batch, I got permission from the Prime Minister and ordered fifty missiles to intercept them before they entered our atmosphere."

"Kate! You didn't!"

"What were we supposed to do, Doctor? You didn't answer my messages. I couldn't take the risk of more human casualties."

"And? What happened?"

Kate paused a moment before answering. To Bill, she looked embarrassed. Or maybe defeated.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. As the missiles approached the swarm, they just vanished – both from the satellite footage and also off the radar back on the ground. They did nothing to alter the course of the objects. Doctor, there are approximately five hundred small objects on a crash course with London in four hours. What do you suggest we do about it?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:**

Thanks so much for the follows, favorites and kind reviews! Here's a chapter for the weekend.

* * *

 _The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

 **THE DOCTOR:** Watson, come here – I need you.

 **NARDOLE:** ?

 **THE DOCTOR:** Coordinates…

 **THE DOCTOR:** 50°30'26"No°04'57"W. Current time.

The Doctor silenced his mobile when it started ringing.

Kate and the small detachment of guards that accompanied them to the lab had departed, leaving The Doctor and Bill with Osgood. Naturally, the Doctor agreed to help Kate with the conundrum of the 'weird round green things', as Bill called them.

"Doctor, I've pulled up a secure folder that contains all of the CalTech research into the objects, as well as transcripts from all interviews. There's a lot here, so-"

"Right. Thanks, Osgood. Bill, why don't you take the laptop somewhere quiet and look that over."

Bill's expression made the Doctor smile inwardly, though he was careful to guard his reaction.

"You know – précis it for me."

" _Pr_ é _cis_?"

"Yes. Sift through it all and come back with a concise summary. We've got four hours before 500 deadly objects rain down across London. Let's put a clock on it. Précis is due in thirty minutes."

"Thirty minutes? You've got to be kidding me!"

"Time is money. Anything you can't summarize in thirty minutes is worthless to us. Come on, Potts, you can do it! Chop-chop!"

Osgood helped Bill pack up the laptop and led her out of the lab.

The Doctor returned his attention to the LCD screen, which showed the camera view of the recovered objects in the quarantine room. On screen readings showed a higher-than-average gamma radiation, but nothing that would be an immediate threat to humans, or himself, for that matter.

Given that over seventy hours had elapsed since the objects made impact, the Doctor assumed they were much more radioactive when the research team first encountered them. Could radiation have caused the hallucinations and disappearances? If not, what else could produce those symptoms? And why didn't they burn up in the atmosphere?

He was not disappointed when his consideration was interrupted by the signature wheezing, groaning noise of the TARDIS as it materialized in a corner of the lab. Nardole opened the door and stumbled out.

"What are you doing in London, Doctor? And why do you need me? And who's Watson? I've got an awful headache, and this isn't helping."

Just then, Osgood returned to the lab. She registered the addition of the TARDIS in the corner and Nardole's presence.

"Who's this, Doctor?"

"Petronella Osgood, UNIT scientist, meet Nardole, formerly of Mendorax Dellora, year 5435. He's with me."

"You brought me to _UNIT_?" The Doctor recalled telling Nardole about UNIT over the years, and now realized that he probably painted a fairly negative picture, overall.

"Yes, well, they have an emergent situation and need our help. And I think right now one Bill Potts would welcome your help with an assignment. She can catch you up on the details. And tell her to focus on the interviews." Osgood directed the spluttering Nardole to the office Bill was currently using.

* * *

"Précis this, he says. Précis my arse!"

Bill took a moment to look around Osgood's office. It had a definite absent minded genius flavor. While clean, it was cluttered with an array of decidedly unscientific things. Bill balanced on the chair that had a seat like the top of a yoga ball and admired a picture on the desk showing Osgood with someone who appeared to be her twin sister. She picked up one of several colorful koosh balls and squeezed it a few times as she dug into the first file.

She knew she was done for after the first paragraph, which was followed by a complex chart labeled with a lot of numbers and mathematical symbols.

"Okay, so my précis is, this is written in another language."

It was a whitepaper that described the physical findings of the meteoroids. Only in the white paper, they called them 'smooth round objects', 'objects of unknown origin', and in some cases, just 'objects'. There was a lot of math. Bill opened up a new document and took bulleted notes. At the end of five minutes, she was only seven pages into the two hundred-page document. She felt a lump form in her throat. There were still eleven other documents.

That's when Nardole came in, looking somewhat frustrated and befuddled.

"Nardole! Thank God! You've got to help me."

"The Doctor said you could catch me up. I don't know anything about what's going on, and I've got a splitting headache."

"Are you effing kidding me?" The cyborg cringed at the higher volume of Bill's reaction. She forced herself to calm down and lower her voice. "I don't have time to catch you up. I've got to get through all these files and summarize them, and there are only 25 minutes left." Nardole looked over her shoulder at the list of files on the menu.

"The Doctor said to focus on the interviews. Whatever that means." _Great,_ Bill thought. _I've just wasted five whole minutes._

"Why didn't you start with the one that says Executive Summary?"

"Where?"

"There." Nardole touched the screen with one pudgy finger. The file name was, in fact, Executive Summary.

* * *

Twenty-five minutes later, Bill and Nardole returned to the lab with the laptop.

"Doctor, we got through the summary and all of the interview files…Doctor?"

The Doctor was not in the lab. Osgood stood by the computer, watching the LCD screen. Bill and Nardole joined her to see what had her attention.

There was someone in a radiation suit in the quarantine room. The tall, slender figure appeared to be scanning the tray of smooth, round objects with a sonic screwdriver.

"Doctor – you didn't!" Bill exclaimed.

"Ssh!" Osgood hissed.

The Doctor looked up at the camera mounted in the corner of the room and grinned. "Bill, Nardole, great! You're just in time. Now, let's hear your précis."

"But, Doctor, you really shouldn't be in there. Those things are toxic!" Bill bit her lip. Osgood gave her a reassuring smile.

"To humans, yes. But the Doctor has a higher tolerance to gamma radiation."

Nardole grinned smugly. "You humans are so fragile."

"The radiation is currently within tolerable levels for humans. 32 Sieverts is the equivalent of what you might pick up from a full-body CT scan. The reading has dropped by three Sieverts since we got here, and I imagine it was much higher when they were first recovered. In another day or two they will be at the same level as normal background radiation."

"That's good, I guess…right? Doctor, are you sure you're safe in there with those things?" The radiation suit looked awfully thin to Bill.

"Potts, précis – now!"

Bill swallowed and opened the laptop.

"The objects are comprised of an unknown substance, each weighing between five and six ounces. They're uniformly round and green-"

"We know all that! Nardole, didn't you tell her to look at the interviews?"

"Of course I did!"

"Bill, a précis should only have the most critical information. Now cut to the chase, please." Even though the Doctor's words were brusque, Bill knew he wasn't really angry. She felt her cheeks grow hot. Getting chided in front of Nardole was one thing. Getting called out in front of Osgood was another.

"Right then. The UNIT Captains interviewed the two crewmen who transported the objects from Africa to California. The pilot had already vanished. One crewman, Second Lieutenant Frederic Bowman, was too delirious to interview. They couldn't even get his attention. Like the pilot, he vanished right in front of the interviewers.

"The co-pilot, Major Meredith Gallion, was also in poor shape, but they were able to have a brief dialogue before she became so delirious that they ended the interview."

"And?" Bill got the sense that perhaps she was going into too much detail on mundane things.

"She said she kept going to a different place. She said it was very strange there and the colors were wrong. she saw terrifying beings. She thought she was in hell. Time moved differently, she said. She reported being gone for days, but the medical care team confirmed that she never went anywhere."

"Interesting." On the LCD monitor, the Doctor had picked up one of the objects with a large forceps and was digging into it with what looked like a dental instrument. Bill didn't know if he was commenting on what she just told him or on the object under scrutiny.

"Is there any more?"

"Yes. Sorry. A medical officer and a psychologist interviewed Captain Blake after it became clear he was exposed. He reported similar hallucinations to those of Major Gallion. He was adamant that he had actually gone somewhere else, and was there for quite some time."

"Did he mention anything that the other subject did not?" The Doctor's voice was suddenly much closer. Bill was surprised to see that he had just entered the laboratory, no longer wearing the radiation suit. He wiped perspiration from his brow and ran a hand through his damp hair.

"Hot in there?"

"The suit's a bit warm, yes. Now, is there _anything else_?"

"What? Erm, no, that's it, really."

"What about the other UNIT Captain? The one who wasn't affected?"

"Captain Sybil Mattingly." Bill looked over to Osgood.

"We held Mattingly for twenty four hours, but she never showed any symptoms. I think she's still in the compound."

"That's good news. Bill, thanks for the précis. Now, go interview Mattingly."

"Me?" _Huh._ "And what are you going to do?"

"Hopefully, I will examine that mobile. Osgood, any chance it's arrived yet?" Osgood startled a little.

"No, but it should've been here by now. I'll look into it."

"But Doctor, what should I ask her about?"

"Who?"

"Captain Mattingly." The Doctor smiled winningly.

"You always ask really good questions, Potts. Go ask Mattingly a few. And take crisp notes. You can bring Nardole along if you want."

"You're not going to go do something dangerous, are you, Boss?"

"Of course not, Nardole! Osgood will keep an eye on me. Right, Osgood?" The dark haired scientist nodded hesitantly as she led Bill and Nardole toward the door.

"Remember your promise." Nardole looked sternly at the time lord on his way out of the lab.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:**

Thanks so much for the follows, favorites and reviews! Here's the next installment for the Mother's Day weekend.

* * *

 _Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"Wow. Oh, wow. I mean, wow."

"Can you come up with another word, perhaps? And is there a way we can look at these on the big screen?" The Doctor was equally fascinated by the two images on Captain Blake's mobile device.

Osgood shook herself out of her amazed stupor and searched for something under the computer desk. "That's quite a phenomenon. We saw the video of him taking the pictures, and that looked perfectly normal. It's almost like the camera captured his hallucinations."

"Or they weren't hallucinations at all."

"You think he traveled somewhere else? Another dimension?" _Full marks, Osgood_ , the Doctor thought, but didn't say.

Osgood crawled out from under the table with a device cord in hand and a few smears of dust on the forearm of her white lab coat. Once the phone was connected, the first image in the series displayed on screen.

It was a hellish view. The Doctor could practically feel heat baking out of the image. It was almost as if the phone was on the verge of melting at the time the picture was taken.

The walls, floor and ceiling emanated in reddish purple hues that were so bright they looked dark. Osgood winced and removed her glasses to rub her eyes.

"The colors hurt my eyes!"

"They're infrared, and outside of the human visual spectrum." They were barely within his superior visual spectrum. The Doctor knew looking at them for too long would give him one hell of a headache. He wasn't surprised that they bothered the human scientist.

"And what the hell is _that_?" Osgood pointed to the middle-right of the image, where there appeared to be a creature made completely of black fire. In the image, it looked quite a bit larger than a human male.

"Is there a way you can keep the image on screen and pull up the video clip from the hospital room?"

"Yes, I think so. Give me a minute." Osgood worked at the laptop, and within moments produced a split screen showing the first frame of the video on the left and the image from the mobile on the right.

The Doctor saw it right away, but waited for Osgood to catch up.

"The creature in the photo is standing in the same place as the physician in the video. The CCTV camera perspective is from the corner of the ceiling, and the mobile camera is from the bed. Captain Blake was lying on the bed when he took the picture. That's why the creature looks like it's in the corner."

"I agree. Let's look at the next one."

The next picture showed the same area, but a different view capturing two additional fire creatures and a little more detail of the purple/red wall. The Doctor noted that Osgood was having increasing difficulty looking at the images, repeatedly looking away and then looking back. He forced himself to study the images, ignoring the growing spike of pain in his prefrontal cortex.

"Go ahead and advance the video until the orderlies come into the frame." Osgood did as the Doctor requested. "Okay, same thing here. The two new fire creatures are the orderlies." The Doctor detached the mobile from the cord and the infernal image disappeared from the screen.

"It's a shame he didn't do video, instead." Osgood wiped at her streaming eyes and replaced her glasses.

"It might have helped to have that, but this gives us a lot. That was a brilliant move, given he probably thought he was going out of his mind at the time." The Doctor ignored Petronella's surprised look.

"Come along. We have work to do." The Doctor snapped his fingers and the TARDIS door opened just in time for him to walk through it.

"But, Doctor…" Osgood's words cut off as she followed him into the TARDIS. He waited for her initial reaction upon seeing the grandeur of the console room. While she mutely came to grips with dimensional transcendence, he plugged his sonic into the console and pulled the monitor over to have a look.

"You've redecorated. You have more round things now. How does that work?"

The Doctor struggled to hide his disappointment.

"Aren't you going to say 'it's bigger on the inside?'"

"Well, I already knew that didn't I? I have the archives from the sixties and seventies, when you were earthbound. We have a file on you, you know." The Doctor cringed inwardly.

"I imagine you have a lot more than that. Come over here and look at this." Osgood used her inhaler and stood on the Doctor's left.

"Is that Gallifreyan?"

"Oh. Sorry. Here…"

"That's better, now we can both read it." The Doctor suspected that Osgood knew he initially showed the Gallifreyan on purpose. He made a conscious effort to stop showing off. _What is it with this one? You'd think I had a crush_ , he thought.

* * *

"Captain Sybil Mattingly?" The young officer turned toward Bill and Nardole as they approached. Bill breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the ID card clipped to the Captain's jacket displayed her last name under her image.

"Yes?"

"Hi, I'm Bill Potts, and this is Nardole. We're working with Kate Stewart related to those meteoroids and what happened to Captain Blake." The Captain flinched slightly at the mention of her missing colleague.

"We were hoping we could have a few minutes of your time."

"Yes, of course."

The trio found an empty conference room and settled around the small table. Bill opened the laptop, which she'd brought to 'take crisp notes,' in the Doctor's words. Nardole looked on expectantly. She cleared her throat nervously.

"So, I understand that you and Captain Blake traveled to California to interview the surviving crewmembers that transported the objects from the Sahara. Is that right?" The youthful captain bobbed her head. Bill couldn't help but notice a thin scar that began just above her right eyebrow and extended up into her hair. No hair grew along the meandering path of the scar.

"Yes. By the time we got there, though, Colonel Hernandez was already gone, and Lieutenant Bowman was too delirious. We spoke with Major Gallion, and then collected and transported a small sample of the objects back to UNIT HQ."

"When did you notice that something was wrong with Captain Blake?" Again, Bill saw that flash of pain upon mention of the name.

"Blake was fine on the flight home. We used a few hours of the flight to write up the report from our interview with Gallion. After that, we chatted and played cards for a while and then both went to sleep. He seemed okay.

"When we got back to HQ, we were debriefed separately. That took about an hour. When I met up with him in the canteen, he seemed off. He was pale, and he looked like he didn't feel well. He didn't eat much. Finally, he asked me if I was seeing anything weird. I told him I wasn't. Then, he told me he'd had a hallucination just after his debriefing. He told me not to tell anyone. But I did, right away. They had him in quarantine within minutes. I tried to visit, but I wasn't allowed."

"How long had you known Captain Blake before this mission?" Bill shot a look at Nardole, who obviously hadn't picked up on the non-verbal cues.

"Five years. We went through basic training together. We did loads of missions together, and saw a lot of strange things. He's saved my life more than once. Blake's a very good friend." Bill noted the use of present tense, and also wondered if Blake was more than a friend to Mattingly.

"I'm very sorry for your loss." Bill allowed a moment or two before asking another question.

"I'd like you to think through the whole trip, from the point that you arrived in California to the point at which you handed off the objects back in London. Do you remember any instance where Captain Blake might have had unprotected contact with the objects?"

Mattingly appeared to think through it. "No, I'm sure he didn't. We were both in radiation suits when we were near the objects. And we never handled them directly. They were in a secure, lead-lined chest."

"What about your time with Major Gallion and Lieutenant Bowman? Did Blake have any direct physical contact with either of them?"

"No. Not at all. _I_ was actually the one who did that. Toward the end of our talk with Gallion, I held her hand. She seemed so frightened. And I think she knew what was going to happen. In her last lucid moment, she told me to tell her kids she loved them." Bill remembered that detail from the interview summary.

"And you've been fine so far. No symptoms?"

"None at all. I feel great. No hallucinations."

Bill was just about out of questions, and disappointed that they hadn't uncovered anything new.

"Can you think of anything at all that Captain Blake did differently from you?"

"Sorry, but there's nothing. He played it by the book. We knew these things were potentially deadly, and with the exception of me touching Major Gallion, we followed every precaution."

"Okay then. Thanks so much for your time and candor." Nardole interrupted Bill just as she was wrapping up.

"Where did you get that scar? It looks recent." Bill shot Nardole another angry look, which he ignored. Mattingly reached up and touched the scar.

"Oh, that! Yes. I was on a mission in Afghanistan last year and was wounded in a drone attack. Lost the eye and got a traumatic brain injury. I was in hospital for three months. Had to learn to walk and talk all over again, and part of my memory is gone. It's been a struggle, but I'm grateful to be fully operational and back on the job. This was only my second mission since I've been back."

"Oh. Well, I'm sorry to hear about your accident, and glad you are on the mend. Thanks again for your time, Captain." Bill saved her notes and closed the laptop. Once Mattingly was out of earshot, Bill couldn't help but tear into Nardole.

"Well, that was rude, asking about her scar. She's probably trying hard to forget about it."

"Well, I was curious. Thought we ought to ask."

 _Aliens. So insensitive!_ Bill thought. Of course, the only aliens she'd met so far were also men.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:**

Chapter six came together earlier than expected. Starting on seven now. Thanks for sticking with this story!

* * *

 _I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"I think we can rule out the possibility that they're living organisms. I see no evidence of bio markers or vital signs."

"You thought they might be alive?" The science officer seemed surprised by the notion. The Doctor nodded.

"You never know. Best to check and be sure."

His first thought upon hearing about the meteoroid assaults was that an alien species sought to colonize Earth. The mode of entry made it nearly impossible to recover all of the objects. With the first onslaught, the recovery team had only managed to collect a third of the batch. If the objects were in fact miniaturized space capsules, that approach almost guaranteed successful colonization.

"And what are they made out of? I've never seen a mineral breakdown quite like that. Mind you, objects from space aren't really my specialty. We would do well to look at Cal-Tech's next report, once it's available."

"Do you expect it in the next three hours or so?"

"Erm, no."

"Well then, we'll have to punt." The Doctor pulled up the data extracts on the scrapings he took from one of the objects. A colorful chart displayed showing a complex mineral composition.

"I see nine separate minerals in this composite. What do you notice about them?" The Doctor watched Osgood as she studied the screen, curious to see how long it took her.

"These are all the hardest elements on the periodic table. I don't recognize these two, here." Osgood pointed them out on the screen.

"Your lot haven't discovered them yet."

"Oh good, so I will be sure to call them in so we can get them added to the periodic table."

"Perhaps they'll even name one after you. How does 'Petronellite' strike you?"

"I think I like Osgoodium a bit better."

The Doctor pulled up a high-resolution 3-d image of one of the objects.

"Aha – I thought as much! They have a warm, gooey center."

"What do you mean?"

"There is a liquid core. And within that very dense core, it looks like there is something else…"

Osgood stood at his shoulder, peering at the image so closely that her nose nearly touched the screen.

"Can you see out of those spectacles at all? Perhaps you need a new prescription."

"Hah hah – very funny, Doctor. That is weird, though. It makes me think of…never mind, it's silly."

"What?"

"Well, we've already ruled out that they're alive."

"Forget that for a minute and tell me what you're thinking. Don't edit yourself with what we currently think is true."

"It's like an egg. Seriously. There's the hard shell, and then the albumen, which is sustaining the –"

"Yolk." The Doctor gazed at the image anew. "That's not silly at all, Osgood."

"But there are no vital signs, you said so yourself."

"No vital signs that we can detect. That's a little different."

"But – "

"No buts. Let's just keep that as one of our working hypotheses. I think we've done all we can with the physical findings. Now, let's check out the source." The Doctor engaged the manual controls and entered the coordinates.

"What are you doing, Doctor? I didn't sign on for a trip!"

"We're just taking a little hop to the place and time where that last batch of objects came through, and where those rockets disappeared. I want to see it happen and get some readings from that area."

He also hoped to come up with a brilliant way to divert the objects or send them back where they came from, but he didn't tell Osgood about that higher objective. The time rotor spun in a dizzying array of light. In two ticks they were there. The Doctor engaged the hand brake.

"Okay. We're just at the coordinates where the objects were first sighted both times. Let's watch what happens. They should punch through any moment now…" The Doctor pushed a few buttons, flipped several switches, and finally pulled a different monitor over to have a look.

Next, he failed to suppress the drive to show off and opened the door onto the vast emptiness of space. He guided Osgood to the door with one hand on her shoulder.

"Don't worry, there's a force field all around the TARDIS, keeping the oxygen in and the vacuum of space out." He smiled slightly at the gasp from the scientist.

"Doctor, it's amazing!"

"You've never been in space, have you?"

"No." He vaguely remembered inviting Osgood, perhaps even this Osgood, to travel with him. Maybe some day she would change her mind.

"Look sharp, here come our objects!" The Doctor pointed to the right, where the flaming balls of light seemed to punch through a crevice in space.

"That looks like a cosmic rift. So we were right, they're coming from somewhere else."

"Could be another dimension. Could be a parallel universe." The objects were coming through more densely now.

"This is the best light show ever!" The Doctor wished Bill were here to enjoy it as well. If everything turned out okay, when all this was over, he would take her to see the Perseid cloud along the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle instead.

The Doctor left Osgood at the door and returned to the console. He thought it was entirely possible to have the TARDIS materialize around the streaking objects, locating them in a cargo hold. The velocity differential was a bit tricky, though. He did some quick computations. Yes, totally doable. Well, probably doable.

"Come back in, Osgood, gotta shut the door now. We're going to do a thing."

"A thing?" She moved back toward the console. The Doctor shut the doors with a snap of his fingers.

"Yeah, a thing. Give me a moment – have to concentrate." He worked away at a keyboard, checked his work on the monitor, and then pressed the Execute button.

Osgood blanched at the sudden thrust of speed as the TARDIS matched the trajectory of the swarm of objects, finally overtaking them. They both had to grab onto the console to keep their feet when the sense of motion suddenly stopped. Osgood barely avoided a nasty tumble.

Once he'd absorbed the shock, the Doctor checked the monitor again. "Got 'em!"

"Got what?" He couldn't suppress a grin.

"We intercepted the objects. They're all in the TARDIS holding area."

"Was that your plan all along? Just pop up here and save London?"

"Well, I thought it might be possible, but I wasn't sure." Next, he reset the coordinates for the rift. "Hang on – we've got an express delivery to make."

Once he was sure Osgood had a secure hold on the console, he pressed the Execute button. The TARDIS retraced her path at the same madcap pace. The Doctor clung to the console with one arm while typing hasty instructions with the other.

When they reached the end of their journey, they were both thrown violently as the TARDIS halted sharply at the rift and jettisoned the objects.

The Doctor picked himself up and hastened to the monitor. He saw no trace of any of the objects.

He heard a curse and turned his attention to the UNIT scientist, who was on all fours, working awkwardly to gain her feet. Her lab coat had acquired additional dust. The Doctor made a mental note to borrow Bill's robotic floor sweeper once they were back in Bristol.

"Are you okay over there?"

"I gained a few bruises, thanks very much. So, did the objects go back through the rift?"

"Yes, indeedy. Just like the rockets did." A reading at the bottom of the screen caught the Doctor's attention. Just as he registered the danger they were in the cloister bell sounded. Now it was his turn to curse.

"What's happening, Doctor?"

"We're being pulled into the rift." He typed madly and flipped the emergency action lever.

The TARDIS made an exceptionally painful groaning noise. The lights in the console room switched to the scarlet emergency lighting system.

The Doctor glanced back at the screen. They were still being pulled into the rift, and there were some worrying readings. He sprinted to the other side of the console to access the psychic interface.

"Osgood, I'm going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer honestly. Your safety is at stake."

"What's the question?"

"Which one are you – zygon, or human?"

"You know I can't answer that."

"I really need to know, because we're getting a strong reading for bohrium in the rift. If you're a zygon, the exposure will make you very ill. If you're human, it will have no effect."

"Doctor, bohrium is dangerous for zygons, but it's deadly for time lords. And your nose is bleeding." He wiped a hand under his nose. It came away red. He felt a sudden wave of giddiness, and leaned against the console until his head cleared. When he looked up again, Osgood was beside him, looking concerned.

The TARDIS was making a hell of a racket, between the cloister bell and a new klaxon the Doctor had never heard before. 'Bohrium beyond tolerable levels' flashed on the screen. The giant air vents in the ceiling and floor panels turned on, adding to the cacophony.

His head throbbed alarmingly. The Doctor sunk his hands into the psychic interface and did his best to channel all of his attention on getting them back to UNIT one minute after they'd left.

"Doctor, what can I do?"

The Doctor shuddered with the exertion of maintaining the psychic link, but he felt the TARDIS free herself from the force pulling them into the rift. _That was too close._

He let himself sink to his knees, wiping blood-tinged sweat from his brow with a shaky hand.

"Next stop, UNIT HQ."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:**

Here is the next chapter. Given what's unfolding in Season 10, I think this story fits between _Thin Ice_ and _Knock Knock._ This is the first time I've worked on a story during an active season and I find it both challenging and exhilarating. My first story was for _The Thick of It_ long after the show was off the air – much easier to plan an outline, since the whole canon storyline was known and not in flux.

I made some minor tweaks to Chapter 1 to true things up with Season 10, but they don't affect the plotline, so there's no need to go back and re-read. I will continue to groom chapters along the way and will let you know if anything major changes. Anyway, thanks so much for reading, and the follows, favorites and reviews!

* * *

 _No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"That tears it! Where the devil has he gone now?!" Nardole let loose a string of alien curse words Bill was not familiar with.

He was right. The lab was empty. Might mean nothing, though. Perhaps the Doctor and Osgood popped off to the canteen for a coffee or some chips.

Of course, if that were the case, they probably wouldn't have taken the TARDIS.

Bill spied the mobile phone on the desk next to the computer. She unlocked the screen and was rewarded with an image so intense she dropped the phone back onto the desk.

"What's that?" Nardole had come up behind her.

"I think it's Blake's phone. That image was…crazy." Steeling herself, Bill reclaimed the phone and plugged it into the cord lying alongside it. The image she'd originally seen displayed on the monitor.

Bill squinched her eyes shut, but didn't look away from the image. Her stomach quivered with sudden nausea. She heard Nardole draw in air sharply between his teeth.

"Don't see that every day, do you?" The delloran offered.

They were interrupted by the familiar sound of the TARDIS materializing in the corner that it previously occupied. Bill steeled herself for a row between the Doctor and Nardole. She was a bit irked herself. Bill didn't like being shunted off to do grunt work while the Doctor did all the interesting stuff with Osgood.

But when the TARDIS was fully materialized, Bill's passing jealousy quickly changed to concern. The TARDIS looked – there was only one way to describe it – pale. Her customary bright blue looked faded and parched. Steam emanated from the surface of the time machine.

The door swung open and Osgood poked her head out. Bill noted that she was in disarray. Her hair had come partially loose from the neat ponytail, and her crisp white lab coat was rumpled and covered in dust.

"Doctor," Nardole bellowed, "What have you done?"

The Doctor appeared behind Osgood, leaning against the door. Bill's stomach did a slow roll when she saw the front of his shirt, which was spattered with blood. He held a bloody handkerchief under his nose. He was very pale.

"He's not well." Osgood grasped his arm and led him slowly out of the TARDIS. The Doctor did not object, which was another scary thing. Nardole was at his other side in an instant. They led him over to a chair. He sat gingerly, in obvious pain.

"The lights," He whispered hoarsely. He had his head down and was covering his eyes. Osgood cringed, as if she'd forgotten something.

"So sorry! Could someone get the lights, please?" Bill searched for the light switches, but Nardole found them first and used both hands to shut them all off at once. The lab was plunged into darkness, the only light emanating from the monitors, laptops, and other equipment.

Osgood made eye contact with Bill.

"Photosensitivity. It's really bad for the first few hours."

"Boss, what happened?" Bill was surprised by the gentleness in the cyborg's voice.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Bohrium exposure. I only got a small dose, but the TARDIS wasn't as lucky." Bill followed his glance over to the steaming blue box.

Nardole extended a hand to the Doctor palm up. The time lord looked at it for a moment, and then reluctantly dug into his pocket and handed over his sonic. "Bohrium! Where the devil did you run into that?"

Osgood filled Bill and Nardole in on their adventure while Nardole scanned the Doctor with the sonic. When she got to the part about capturing the objects in the TARDIS and sending them back into the rift they were interrupted by the arrival of Kate, and Osgood's twin. Bill did a double take. Other than some minor wardrobe variations, the two Osgoods were completely identical.

"Why is it so dark in here?" Kate asked.

 _Their_ Osgood backed up and recapped things for Kate and her sister. Bill took the opportunity to fetch the Doctor a glass of water, which he accepted gratefully. He sat huddled in the chair, wrapped in a blanket. He was trembling. There were crusts of dried blood around each ear.

"Doctor, how bad is it? Are you going to be okay? And what's bohrium?" The time lord looked up at her and offered a weak smile. His eyes were very bloodshot.

"Bill." His voice failed him. He rubbed his throat and had a sip of water.

"Bohrium is an element that doesn't occur naturally on Earth." This came from the other Osgood. Apparently, _their_ Osgood had finished the recap, and now all attention was on the Doctor.

"It was discovered back in the seventies as a result of particle smashing experiments and added to the periodic table of elements. While it's not part of our typical background radiation, it doesn't seem to have any adverse effect on humans or any of the lab animals that were exposed to it during initial testing. Half-life is only seventeen seconds, so it's very difficult to work with. Testing was discontinued in 1976 due to budget cuts and the law of diminishing returns. There just wasn't a need to do anything with it."

 _Their_ Osgood picked up the narrative. "Other species, however, are not necessarily as resistant to bohrium as we are. In the nineteen seventies, when the Doctor was on staff here at UNIT, he was exposed to bohrium and nearly died. It interferes with a time lord's ability to regenerate and causes rapid breakdown of several critical systems, such as the vascular system."

"That's why you're bleeding?" Bill asked the Doctor. He nodded.

"You need to lie down, sir." Nardole grasped his arm to help him stand, but the Doctor resisted.

"Zygons are also sensitive to bohrium," the Doctor rasped, eying the other Osgood. "It could be the objects contained bohrium. The half-life is so short that by the time I examined them there was no trace. If anything else happens with the rift, or if we get more objects, the zygon population of Earth is in grave danger. And we still don't know why the objects came out of the rift in the first place." The Doctor's voice caught and he coughed. Everyone saw the fine spray of blood speckles on the back of his hand.

Nardole tugged on the Doctor's arm again. This time, the time lord rose stiffly and let Nardole steer him towards the TARDIS.

"No more talking. You need rest. Come along." The delloran led the Doctor back into the TARDIS. Bill was torn between following to see what she could do to help and staying to be a part of the conversation back in the lab.

"This isn't good," Kate opined. "With the Doctor out of commission we really don't have any defense against another attack."

The second Osgood moved to the computer. Her sister joined her. "We still don't know what these disappearances mean, either. My sister said she and the Doctor compared the images to the video footage from Blake's hospital room and matched the fire creatures to the doctor and orderlies. Could it be a parallel universe? If so, might the people who have disappeared still be alive?"

"But when we got close to the rift, that's when we came in contact with the bohrium," Their Osgood offered.

"But bohrium doesn't have an effect on humans," The other Osgood countered. "If any of the people who vanished were zygons, though,"

Her sister finished her sentence. "They'd be dead for sure."

Bill had had enough. "Hold on a minute – what are zygons?"

That question led to a five-minute primer on the history of zygons on Earth and the revelation of the true meaning of the two Osgoods, after which, Bill adjusted her mental names of the two sisters to "Bowtie" (their Osgood) and "Question Marks" (the other one). God forbid they changed their clothes.

Nardole emerged from the TARDIS at the tail end of the zygon discourse.

"How is he?" Kate asked. Her features were full of concern.

"I dunno. Not so good. Unconscious, at the moment."

"Will he recover?"

"I'm not a doctor, and really don't know much about time lords, other than the basics. They have two hearts. When critically ill or injured, they can regenerate a whole new body, rather than dying. They are sensitive to aspirin. I had heard about bohrium, but until now thought it was a myth, sort of like Superman and kryptonite."

"So, there's nothing we can do to help him?" Kate asked. Bowtie responded.

"Maybe we can. I've read Harry Sullivan's notes from the seventies. He was a UNIT medical officer who worked closely with your father, the Brigadier, and also the Doctor. When the Doctor suffered bohrium exposure back then, Sullivan did a lot to help him recover, though largely through trial and error. As a result, we have a fairly large body of knowledge about time lord physiology, and even some blood and tissue samples." Bowtie looked down. "I'm not a medic, either, though. Just because we have the information doesn't mean we can really do much with it."

Kate, however, still looked hopeful. "I think I might know someone who can help. I'm going to step out and make a few calls. Osgoods, please work on a strategy and contingency plan to cover monitoring that rift and responding to anything else that comes out of there. Reach out to Cal-Tech and NASA as needed, as well as any other agencies we can employ to monitor and activity at the rift. I will rejoin you presently. Nardole and Bill, please don't go anywhere, we'll need you. And the Doctor needs you. Keep an eye on him, please."

"Right," Bill and Nardole eyed each other. _No kidding._


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:**

Thanks so much for the awesome follows, favorites and reviews! This chapter is a bit longer than the others, but I didn't want to split it up. I hope you enjoy your weekend, and I will get plugging along on Chapter 9.

* * *

 _Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

The Doctor drifted just on the edge of a much-needed healing trance. The trance state was annoyingly out of reach. If only he could slip into it and pull it over himself like a warm blanket, he would feel better soon. In the meantime, he was too ill to do more than lie in the clinic bed in the TARDIS, concentrating on his breathing and trying to ignore how awful he felt.

It had been a close call, and the Doctor had the TARDIS to thank for the brevity of his exposure to the bohrium. While he did not think he absorbed enough of a dose to cause a massive hemorrhage or multiple organ failure, apparently he sustained enough damage to cause interference with the healing trance. If anything terrible happened to him in the near future, the Doctor might find himself unable to regenerate, his DNA too damaged from bohrium exposure.

The TARDIS was eerily silent. He knew she wasn't dead, but it was still disconcerting that he felt no presence from her at all. Usually, she was always in the background in his mind, like an over-zealous guardian angel, weighing in on his thoughts, choices and moods. After all these years, they were like an old married couple. To be separated in this way felt almost like an amputation. He offered her what psychic comfort he could, which wasn't much. It felt like speaking into a dead phone – no response, no telling if he was helping or not. But he felt better when he focused on her, instead of his own physical discomfort.

As he hovered near unconsciousness, not asleep, not awake, not dead, the Doctor heard Missy as a low warble in the back of his mind. Best friends, and often mortal enemies since roughly the cradle, their psychic connection was very strong, especially when they were in close proximity in time and space. While she was still secured in the vault in Bristol, that was less than 200 kilometers away. More importantly, they were in the same time zone. When they were farther apart, she faded in and out like a weak radio signal, but right now, she was clear as a bell in the background of the painful, battered landscape of his medial temporal lobe.

Missy was always more adept with her psi skills than he was. The Doctor worked hard to develop a mental shield over the years to keep her out of his head, or at least to have some control over her ability to tap into his thoughts and moods. But in times of weakness, like this one, he didn't have energy to spare to maintain it. He sensed that she knew the degree of his injury, and felt her joy and vindication that her captor was brought low. At the same time, she failed to withhold the strong concern and compassion she also felt.

Surprisingly, the Doctor also sensed another intermittent psychic presence that was in closer proximity. The presence seemed concerned for him, and also frightened for its own well being. The voice was eerily familiar. He was sure if he could just pull himself together a bit more he would know the source of that voice.

He sank a little deeper into the netherworld of the seriously injured. Just as he thought he was finally entering trance state he heard/felt a telltale whisper.

 _What happened the last time you were exposed?_

Missy's tone carried just the right amount of sarcasm to get his attention and tease him away from the release of the trance state. _Bitch,_ he thought.

 _It was his third regeneration, he was fairly sure. He remembered that face – very similar to this one, actually. Similar wardrobe preferences, too, though his third self was more flamboyant. He had a roadster. Bessie. Yes, that was it. Awesome car! Fascinating human companions. Liz Shaw. Jo Grant. There were others, perhaps, but he thought he was alone at the time._

 _And after it happened (whatever_ it _was), the Doctor landed the TARDIS in his lab at UNIT, barely alive. The TARDIS was gravely injured. At the time, the Doctor thought she would never fly again._

 _It took everything he had to rise and make his way to the TARDIS door._ More _than everything he had to push the door open, after which he stumbled and fell awkwardly into the arms of someone he knew well._

 _What was it, though? What happened?_ _It was big. He suspected the Time Lords put him up to it..._

The Doctor slipped into the trance state without even noticing.

* * *

"The American contingent is fully mobilized. The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes have been diverted from their ongoing missions and focused on the rift. NASA, Cal-Tech and the JPL are now working with the Keck Observatory and the SETI Institute to monitor the rift and high and medium Earth orbit for any new development. SETI is working with us on possible scenarios and mitigation strategies for any additional objects that come out of the rift. Canada's Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite, or NEOSSAT, is doing exactly what it's designed for, looking out for any new objects approaching Earth."

Bill nibbled on a scone from the tray of baked goods thoughtfully brought in by Kate when she returned. During the three hours the chief science officer was gone, Bill and Nardole took turns staying with the Doctor in the TARDIS clinic, and sitting in on discussions in the lab, where the two Osgoods worked feverishly to parse through everything they knew and come up with a plan for dealing with the current crises.

Up to this point, Bill and Nardole made sure the Doctor was never left alone, but currently, he seemed stable. They decided they should both attend the briefing with Kate so they knew what was going on. Even so, Bill was anxious to get back to him.

During the first two hours of their vigil, the Doctor was very restless. He'd writhed around, in obvious pain. Bill periodically wiped away the perspiration that formed on his brow, which carried a pink tinge. At times, his eyes were open, but he did not seem awake or react to their presence.

The whites of his eyes were scarlet with burst blood vessels. The lights were currently off in the clinic, and most of the TARDIS, for that matter. Bill didn't know if the TARDIS knew about the Doctor's current condition and was keeping the lights low out of consideration, or if she was so inoperative that she couldn't maintain luminescence.

There were brief periods where the Doctor shivered convulsively. Nardole found a pile of blankets in a nearby cupboard, and they added layers to the Doctor's bedding until the shivering abated. Minutes later, the Doctor kicked his way out of the cocoon, once again sweating copiously.

Bill worried about things like hydration. She tried to get him to take some water, but when she trickled some into his mouth it just rolled out the sides. The Doctor didn't even attempt to swallow it. At one point, Nardole checked the time lord's pulse, but admitted he had no idea what a normal pulse might be. The sonic gave him general readings that indicated the Doctor was seriously ill and intervention was necessary, but they already knew that. They really couldn't be very helpful without someone who understood time lord physiology.

They were surrounded by an impressive array of equipment, but neither Nardole nor Bill had any idea what it was for, or how to operate it. The glass cabinets mounted to the clinic walls sported an intriguing collection of supplies, including mysterious looking bottles and phials of what must be medication. _Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink._

Finally, at the beginning of hour three of their vigil, the Doctor's writhing abated, and he appeared to sink into a state of deep unconsciousness. He hadn't moved since. Bill didn't know whether or not this was a good thing. On the one hand, he looked more restful. On another, though, he seemed even further out of reach, like he was slipping away from them.

Bill considered leaving the briefing to get back to the Doctor, but decided to hang tight for another five minutes. After all, there wasn't much she could do for him.

"The European Space Agency is coordinating their efforts with the Americans. We have a call with all the players in an hour. The ISS astronauts have an idea to modify two weather probes and send them into the rift. They can get real-time data of the whole process. That could prove valuable, especially if the probes get pulled into the rift and are still able to send data back to ISS."

"That's encouraging," Kate opined. "Hopefully they are moving ahead with that idea and not waiting for our call."

Question Marks picked up the narrative. "We've also been working on the problem of the objects that made landfall here on Earth. Based on the data from the Doctor's examination, my sister and I agree that there is a high risk to leaving the objects that weren't collected in the initial recovery mission in situ.

"We still don't know what these things are, or what purpose they have, but know enough about them now to suspect that they may be alive, or possibly transportation for some type of alien tech. Given that everyone who was ever in proximity to the objects has vanished, we've come up with a search and collection approach using drones to minimize any human or zygon exposure.

"Our goal is to find and isolate as many as we can. The drones can be programmed to search for high concentrations of the elements comprising the outer shell of the objects. Two of the elements are new to us, so they have a unique signature that should make detection easy. We'll have the drones deposit the recovered objects in a secure containment facility on the unpopulated outskirts of the Sahara."

"Amazing work, ladies – I knew we could count on you. I trust you have everything you need to make that work?" The twin Osgoods nodded in response.

"Back up a minute - not everyone who was near the objects disappeared," Bill reminded. "Captain Mattingly is fine, and apart from the damage caused by the bohrium exposure from the rift, the Doctor also wasn't affected. Do you know why the objects affect some people and not others?"

The sisters paused and looked at each other, as if performing a silent consultation. Question Marks nodded to Bowtie, who answered.

"Good point, Bill. We've been wondering about that, as well. The Doctor is a time lord, and had no symptoms after handling the objects. Mattingly did not handle the objects, but received an identical amount of exposure as her colleague, Captain Blake did, and she was fine, while he was not. So, what's different about Mattingly?"

"She had a head injury recently. She's only just back on duty." Bill was glad to be able to contribute to the pool of knowledge in some small way. Bowtie gave her a radiant smile.

"If the objects emit a substance that affects the brain, perhaps she wasn't affected because her brain is not normal. Interesting."

"Or maybe that has nothing to do with it. What if she's a zygon? I mean, do we know if all the people who vanished are human? What if zygons aren't affected?"

"Yeah!" Nardole warmed to the idea. "Maybe we could test that out."

"You mean intentionally expose a zygon to the objects and see what happens? Absolutely not!" During Kate's vehement reply Bill saw her eyes dart over to the two Osgoods. Question Marks continued.

"There is another option. What if the objects only affect species with little or no psychic ability? Time Lords are strong telepaths. Zygons are slightly telepathic. Humans in general have very little telepathic ability, with a few notable exceptions. We know that telepathy involves activity in the right parahyppocampal gyrus in the human brain, the zygon brain and the time lord brain, as well.

"It could be that a substance in the objects triggers hallucinations in species that have an under-developed parahyppocampal gyrus. If Mattingly's parahyppocampal gyrus was damaged, under this theory, she should have been just as susceptible as Captain Blake. But if her brain injury caused her parahyppocampal gyrus to become stronger, perhaps picking up the slack from another region that was damaged, then that would explain why she wasn't affected."

"How telepathic are _you_ , Nardole? Maybe we should test it out on you." Question Marks looked pointedly at Nardole. The delloran spluttered in agitation.

"No. Bad idea. Besides, I'm rubbish at telepathy. Just ask the Doctor."

"I wish we _could_."

"Stop it, you two – we're wasting time!" Bill was relieved that Kate decided to put an end to the bickering. Bill considered the growing display of bitterness between Question Marks and Nardole. As far as she knew, they had just met, and yet there seemed to be an immediate conflict between them.

During the time between when Kate left and later returned, Bill noticed that Question Marks checked on the Doctor frequently, but only when Nardole stepped away. Curious. The other Osgood didn't seem to have a problem with him, but this one certainly did.

"It's an interesting theory, Osgood, but I don't see how we'd have time to prove it out. If it won't help us understand what happened to the people who vanished, or how to prevent further disappearances, I suggest you table it. It might be worth running the names of the missing through the zygon census, though. That shouldn't take much effort, and may yield interesting results."

Bill glanced at the clock and prepared to make her exit. "Kate, when you left earlier you said you might have a lead on someone who could help the Doctor."

Kate cleared her throat. "Yes, I do. We do. I have people deployed to collect Doctor Jones and bring her here."

"Doctor Jones?"

"Martha Jones was a companion to the Doctor in an earlier regeneration. After she stopped traveling with him, she joined UNIT as a medical specialist for a time, but left after she married. She's currently on staff at a hospital in London. Unfortunately, the nature of her departure from UNIT was somewhat messy. Frankly, she won't return my calls. But I'm hopeful that when she understands the situation, she will set aside any grievances against UNIT in order to help the Doctor."

 _Let's hope so,_ Bill thought. "Speaking of which, I think I'd better go check on him." Bill left Nardole with the UNIT folks and returned to the TARDIS.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:**

Sorry for the gap week – needed to hammer out some details that will be important later. I had to split up this chapter, which grew very large. The next installment is not far off.

Classic Whovians, you may recognize our story's nemesis from _The Three Doctors_ (3rd Doctor) and _The Arc of Infinity_ (5th Doctor). I'm going a little AU and adding in a third encounter with Omega that takes place shortly after _The Three Doctors_. If you're not familiar with those episodes, have no fear! I will provide relevant backstory in this chapter and the next.

Reviews are always appreciated – thanks so much for reading!

* * *

 _The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

 _The Doctor stood uncomfortably at the TARDIS console, having a tense conversation with Lord President Borusa. The holographic image of Borusa in the high council room with his chief advisor stood about eight inches tall, hovering just over one of the control panels. The image popped up just after the Doctor threw the dematerialization lever and nothing happened. The stuffy bastards had locked the TARDIS controls._

" _It's another singularity," Borusa explained, failing to keep the stress out of his voice. The Doctor drummed his long fingers against the surface of the console. The TARDIS bristled at the ill treatment._

" _So what? There are singularities all the time. What makes you think it's him? And he can't be back. He got blown up in a matter-anti-matter collision." The Doctor and his previous self had caused said collision._

" _Nevertheless, we think he survived, somehow. The Eye of Harmony has become unstable. Just like last time, the Eye's energy is being drained off into another universe. If it continues, time travel will be completely disrupted and Gallifrey will lose its primary power supply. Without it, we won't be able to maintain environmental controls for very long. People will die. We'll lose the matrix, and all the minds in it."_

 _That did sound dire, and also eerily familiar. That was how they first discovered that Omega survived the creation of the Eye of Harmony in an anti-matter universe, and sought revenge upon the time lords for abandoning him to his fate._

" _I was there. He couldn't have survived. It's impossible." The image of Borusa's chief advisor leaned across the ornate high council table toward the Doctor._

" _Omega was the creator – the architect to the Eye of Harmony, Doctor. He converted the nucleus of a black hole into a limitless energy source that gave us the power of reliable time travel. I wouldn't discount it. If anyone could survive that, he could."_

" _What do you want me to do?"_

 _Borusa shared a guarded look with his chief advisor before answering the Doctor's question._

" _This is a diplomatic mission for which you are uniquely qualified."_

 _Gradually, they convinced him. The fact that they locked down the TARDIS' controls had a lot to do with it. They sent the coordinates to his TARDIS, and he was on his way._

 _Once there, the Doctor exited the TARDIS and found himself in an empty, nondescript hallway. A quick scan with the sonic confirmed that the composition of this place was very different from the anti-matter universe Omega had previously constructed and survived in with unprecedented quantum engineering and through sheer force of will._

 _From what the Doctor could tell, this was a parallel universe to his own, though if the readings on his sonic were correct, it was a universe almost entirely devoid of stuff. There was very little matter, indeed. The temporal readings were also wonky. Apparently, wherever he was, time moved differently._

 _And yet he was in a hallway, so someone must have existed to create such a structure out of what limited substance there was in this strange place. He followed the hallway to where it opened up into a vast room. In the middle of the room sat a chair. In the chair sat a being._

 _The Doctor's senses confirmed it was Omega. The ancient time lord no longer wore the ornate mask that protected him from anti-matter in his old universe. What was left was nothing less than animated skeletal remains._

" _Doctor, so good of you to come." No words were spoken aloud. The voice was in his head._

" _Omega, you_ really _need to put on a little weight."_

" _Still the comedian, I see. There is no need to eat. This body, it's just for you. All I really am at this point is my will. And there's no need for you to speak, Doctor."_

" _Oh, I'm old fashioned that way. Plus, I have such a nice voice, don't you think?" The Doctor cast his eyes about the room, but there was really nothing to see. The walls and ceiling seemed barely defined, almost nonexistent._

 _"So, nothing's really changed for you, either – you're still self-will run riot, but that's you all over, isn't it?" The wraith before him showed no reaction._

" _Tell me, how did you survive the collapse of your anti-matter universe?"_

 _Omega waved a skeletal hand to the side, as if to say "child's play!"_

" _I told you that I was sustaining that universe by sheer will. So how would I be unable to create another one? A better one?"_

 _The Doctor gestured toward the nothingness that was the room. "How is this better? It's very clean, but a bit stark for my tastes. Needs dressing up. I could give you the name of an excellent interior decorator, if you'd like."_

" _It has unlimited potential. A clean slate. I can make it what I wish, Doctor."_

" _Then why are you drawing on the Eye of Harmony? If this place is as great as you say it is, then I don't see why you'd need to siphon off power from Gallifrey. I spoke with Borusa, and you're not going to be very happy when you see your energy bill."_

" _You're still so irreverent. You don't like them, I can tell. And yet you came here on their bidding."_

" _Not much choice, really. If you keep this up, Omega, you will make time travel impossible. Is that your plan?"_

" _Render the almighty time lords powerless? Yes, that would be nice. Take away what was stolen from me all those years ago." The voice in his head sounded tired, the Doctor thought._

" _You know, you really have a long memory, Omega. Aren't you sick of being angry? Even if Rassilon meant for you to be destroyed in that supernova, which I'm not sure he did, you're punishing billions of people who had nothing to do with it. And that's just Gallifrey. There are other planets and civilizations back in my universe that depend upon time travel. Why can't you move on? What will it take for you to release the Eye of Harmony?"_

 _A deal with the devil. That's what it took._

" _You, Doctor – it will take you. I need you to help me. This place is so vast. It's fundamentally different from anything I've ever known. Together, we could explore its potential."_

" _You're lonely. Is that it?"_

" _It's too much for me alone. Think of the power we could share."_

" _But you have no power, Omega; all your power is stolen from the Eye of Harmony." The Doctor sensed irritation. Fear, perhaps._

" _That's a lie. I am powerful. I can create anything I want. Things are different here. Time. Space. Matter. It's all very elastic. And I know how to bend it to my will."_

" _Really? Because I don't believe you, Omega. I think you're all talk. Or think. Or whatever. I need a demonstration." The voice didn't respond right away. The Doctor sensed a tumult of emotions coming from the being that was once Omega._

" _Very well. I will give you a demonstration. I will create anything you name. What will allay your reservations?"_

" _Create a body for yourself. Your original body. Right now. And with proper clothes – I don't want to see your unmentionables."_

" _Very well." The Doctor felt the consciousness in his head withdrawing as it concentrated on the task at hand. At the same time, the wraith in the chair began to grow hazy and diffuse._

 _The Doctor didn't waste any time. He tore out of the room, hared down the hallway and through the open door of the TARDIS. He didn't even have to type in coordinates – she dematerialized just as he felt Omega's consciousness reach out one last time._

" _You tricked me!" The voice faded as the TARDIS passed through the membrane between the two universes._

 _The Doctor sent a hasty message to the Gallifreyan high council to temporarily shut down the Eye of Harmony. Without that power, Omega would not be able to sustain his universe._

 _And that's when it happened._

* * *

Bill snapped out of her Candy Crush-induced stupor when the Doctor took a deeper breath and let it out with a sigh. She'd been watching him more closely over the past hour, as she thought he was gradually rising toward consciousness. This time, when she reached over and clasped his hand she was rewarded by a very tight squeeze back. His grip was so strong that she felt the bones of her fingers grind together.

"Doctor!"

His eyes opened, briefly focused on the ceiling, and then found her. His grip on her hand relaxed. While the whites of his eyes were still bloodshot, they were much clearer than before. Bill also thought he had more color in his face.

"Bill." He cleared his throat before continuing. "How long has it been? What's happened?" His hands reached up and swept over his face, as if he was checking to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.

"About six hours. It's 23:00. You look much better. How are you feeling?"

He sat up and swung his long slender legs over the side of the bed.

"On the mend. Not perfect, but who's perfect, right?"

"Boss, you shouldn't be up yet! Take it easy." Nardole entered the clinic and hastened over to the bedside, as if he could somehow restrain the time lord, who seemed bent on rising.

"What's the news?" The Doctor ignored Nardole as he stood, straightening his clothes, which were decidedly rumpled, and, Bill recalled, significantly blood spattered.

Bill and Nardole filled him in as he found a mirror and studied his appearance, located his shoes and slipped them on, relieved Nardole of the sonic screwdriver, aimed it at a nearby wall and scanned it. He studied the readings and didn't seem to like what he saw.

Bill paused in her narration when the Doctor stepped closer to the wall and placed a palm against it in a way that seemed very intentional, even reverent. His eyes closed. He seemed to focus all of his attention inward. An odd golden glow emanated from his hand. Nardole seemed very flustered.

"No, Boss. You can't do that. Stop!" But before Nardole was able to pry the Doctor's hand away from the wall, the glow faded and the Doctor opened his eyes. At the same time, the lights in the room rose to what felt like a more normal luminescence. Bill heard the ventilation suddenly start up – it must have been off all this time. She didn't realize how stuffy it had become until she felt the cool waft of fresh air.

The Doctor leaned against the wall as if giddy. Nardole grasped his forearm to steady him.

"You're an idiot, you know." The Doctor looked up at Nardole and nodded.

"I know that," he replied breathlessly. "But she needed a kick-start. Now she'll have enough energy to recover."

"You should probably lie back down," Bill offered, but, as she forecasted, the Doctor was through lying down for the moment. Instead, he straightened up and began unbuttoning his shirt in a business-like way. He still looked paler than when he'd first awakened, but apparently he really was okay.

"I'm in for a shower. Nardole, fetch me some clothes, please?" The Doctor cast off his Crombie coat, vest and shirt on his way to the discrete stall in the corner of the clinic, which Bill surmised was some sort of shower. When Bill noticed the crust of dried bloody perspiration on his slender back and shoulders she understood the sudden urgency for a shower. After all, it was probably everywhere. _Gross._

Bill turned her back as his hands moved to the flies on his trousers. _Aliens. Men. Whatever. I swear. No sense of decency. At. All._

"Erm, I'll go and let Kate and the Osgoods know you're feeling better?" She didn't wait for a response.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note:**

Here is the next installment for the weekend. There's a lot of exposition here, but moving forward I think we'll see more action. Thanks for sticking with this story!

* * *

 _There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"Brilliant, Osgoods! Nice work containing those objects. And you're sure you've collected all of them?"

The Doctor accepted the cup of tea from Nardole with a nod of gratitude and took a tentative sip. He'd emerged from the TARDIS clean-shaven and in the crisp dark suit that Bill thought made him look like either an orchestra conductor or a magician.

To Bill, he still looked pale and tired. She worried that he was perhaps pushing himself harder than he should. At the same time, she was relieved to see him, and hoped he could help UNIT resolve the current crisis before anyone else disappeared.

"Well, we can't be, can we? We didn't have an exact count. But the drones located 355 of them in addition to the 110 that were originally collected. We should be close." Bill thought the Doctor still looked a bit concerned, but Kate shifted the conversation in another direction.

"Right. So, let's talk about the rift. There have been no new objects spotted between the rift and Earth. The astronauts on the ISS launched two modified weather probes into the rift. If all goes well, we should start receiving data any moment now."

The Doctor cleared his throat and had another sip of tea.

"That's good, Kate, though I have a theory about what's going on. If I'm right, then there's really nothing you can do."

"Well, that's cheerful, Doctor."

Bill thought that Kate's response was a bit surlier than it might have been six hours ago. After all, her team spent all that time conceptualizing and implementing a very complex, risky and expensive plan involving the ISS and space agencies all over the world.

The Doctor smiled shyly, a queer expression playing around his eyes. Bill struggled to interpret it.

"You were right, Kate. This phenomenon isn't about Earth or anything you humans did to incite interest in your little blue planet. It's all about me."

"Arrogant much?" Bill couldn't help it. It just slipped out.

"I remembered the last time I had bohrium sickness. It was a long time ago – longer for me, perhaps, than you lot."

Bowtie spoke up. "Was that the time in 1976 with you were working with the Brigadier?" At the Doctor's sharp look she continued.

"Well, I have Harry Sullivan's account of it. The time lords had removed your travel restriction and you'd been gone a few months. The Brigadier thought he'd never see you again. Dr. Sullivan was passing by your lab when he heard the sound of the TARDIS materializing. Then, you opened the door and tumbled out onto the floor. You almost died."

"Yes, I did." The Doctor paused, perhaps reflecting on the past. "It happened because I interfered with the revenge plans of an ancient time lord who had gotten trapped in an anti-matter universe."

"That was Omega." Bill smiled a little at the passion with which Bowtie demonstrated her comprehensive knowledge of all things Doctor. She also wondered if Question Marks had the same encyclopedic knowledge, but the other Osgood had been quiet since the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS. Perhaps she kept mum because Nardole was also there.

"Omega was a Gallifreyan stellar engineer who was instrumental to the formation of the Eye of Harmony, the nucleus of a black hole that was used by the time lords to perfect time travel.

"He was thought dead as a result of the resultant supernova, but it turned out he was cast into an anti-matter universe, where he survived for millennia. Omega went mad. He was convinced that he had been intentionally exiled as part of a political power play back on Gallifrey. He used his time to devise a way to return to this universe and carry out vengeance on the time lords. When he tried, you managed to blow him up."

"That's impressive, Osgood. Yes, the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, Jo Grant and I were actually transported to Omega's anti-matter universe. It was during my third incarnation. We managed to escape by introducing regular matter into the anti-matter universe. Long story, but I'm sure you already have the details. One thing, though - Omega didn't actually perish in the explosion."

Bowtie looked crestfallen at the discovery of a flaw in her account.

"A while after that, I was summoned by the Lord President of Gallifrey. Due to a major disturbance in the flow of energy in the Eye of Harmony, they ascertained that Omega was back. They sent me to the coordinates of the disturbance to confirm that Omega had survived, and find a way to stop the power drain.

"They were correct. Omega survived the matter-anti-matter collision by transporting himself into yet another universe."

"How'd he do that?" Bill asked. She was no expert, but the science sounded dodgy. The Doctor flashed her an irritated look. She reminded herself that he had only just regained consciousness after a near-death experience and probably still wasn't feeling his best.

"Reminder – stellar engineer who managed to survive thousands of years alone in an anti-matter universe. It would take too long to explain the details. Précis –" he said that with a puckish smile and a wink at Bill, "Time lords have considerable psychic ability. Over time, Omega managed to manipulate his anti-matter universe by will power alone. That's how he'd managed to pull us into his universe the first time. When he realized the end was imminent, he conceived of a new universe, and it formed around him during the explosion."

"Very sci-fi. I like it." Nardole smacked her shoulder and gave her a grim look. _Okay, dial back on the humor, Potts._ The Doctor didn't react to her comment.

"Omega and I spoke. I tried to convince him to stop draining power from the Eye of Harmony, but was unsuccessful. He wanted me to stay with him and build out the new universe. I managed to distract him and escape back into the TARDIS. I told the Gallifreyan High Council to temporarily shut down the Eye of Harmony, which they did. Cutting off Omega's power supply should have caused his fledgling universe to collapse and wink out of existence, and Omega along with it. I thought it had, until now.

"It was on the return journey that it happened. A rift between universes seems to be the one place where bohrium exists in abundance in a gaseous state. I passed through it and got a massive dose. So did the TARDIS. We ended up back at UNIT, and you know the rest."

The Doctor's voice sounded hoarse toward the end of his explanation. He cleared his throat again and had another sip of tea.

Just then, there was a disturbance at the door. It opened, and two armed guards escorted in a very pregnant black woman in a doctor's coat.

"Doctor Jones – thanks so much for coming." Kate approached the woman with a hand extended, but her warm reception was met with a wall of ice. The newcomer looked down at Kate's hand and back up at the chief science officer. Her features gave away no reaction.

"Kate Stewart. I thought I'd seen the last of you. Now where is the Doctor?"

"Martha Jones! No wait – that's Smith-Jones, and two new little Smith-Joneses on the way." The Doctor smiled. If he were feeling better, Bill thought, he might have gotten up to hug the woman. Clearly he recognized her. Martha instinctively placed a hand on her protruding belly at the mention of her pregnancy.

"So you can tell it's twins, then. They also have a ten-year-old brother at home. Doctor, you've changed your face again. I like the new look. How long has it been for you?"

He didn't answer – probably because his life as a time traveler made it difficult to convert his time in relation to human time. Bill was already starting to have difficulty along those lines.

"I hear you've been ill." Dr. Jones extracted a stethoscope from a pocket. The Doctor looked sharply over at Kate.

"You called for Martha. Kate, you shouldn't have done that." To Martha, he said, "No, please, I'm fine, really," though she was already in the process of unbuttoning his collar to apply the bell of the stethoscope to his chest.

"Stop talking." Bill was surprised when he actually shut up and sat still.

Bowtie's mobile buzzed. She left the lab to take the call. A few moments later, Kate's mobile also rang. After checking the screen, she also headed for the door.

"I've got to take this. Be a good patient, Doctor, and let Martha take care of you."

Question Marks filled the gap in conversation while Martha continued her examination, counting the Doctor's pulse, taking out a penlight and peering into his eyes, and then spending more time with the stethoscope listening to his chest.

"So, you think Omega survived after the time lords shut down the Eye of Harmony. But it's been years, Doctor. And on the two encounters you had with him, he was draining power from the Eye. Have you heard anything from Gallifrey this time?

"Nothing. Nardole, could you?" The delloran nodded curtly and disappeared back into the TARDIS. The Doctor straightened his clothes once Martha concluded her exam.

"Nardole will check in with Gallifrey. Martha, this is Bill Potts. Bill, Martha. Martha, Bill."

When Bill shook Martha's hand she felt the intensity of the older woman's gaze, as if she were studying her.

"So, you're the latest, eh? Has he turned you into a soldier yet?" Martha's tone was friendly enough, but her facial expression remained neutral.

"What? No! I'm a – he's my tutor."

The Doctor cleared his throat. "I think that's enough of an introduction for now. Even if there's no change in the Eye of Harmony, there are too many similarities between what's happening now and my previous run-ins with Omega."

Apparently done with her exam, Martha settled in a chair near the Doctor's, pulled out a tablet, and began scanning through what Bill surmised was Harry Sullivan's white paper on time lord physiology.

"The first time I met Omega, he'd managed to create strange blob-like entities that materialized on Earth, captured things, and brought them into the anti-matter universe. That brings us back to the objects.

"When you first mentioned that people were disappearing after having contact with the objects, it sounded very familiar. I think it's prudent to monitor them carefully, but from afar. In fact, I'd recommend moving the objects that are here and also those at Cal-Tech to the storage facility in Africa if the act of moving them wouldn't increase the risk of exposure."

Bowtie returned mid-way through the conversation, her face tense.

"Doctor, I've just had word from Cal-Tech. The drones that were used to gather the objects have vanished, along with the jet that transported the objects from the Sahara. Apparently the jet went missing about six hours ago. The drones only just disappeared."

The room was silent, save for the ticking of the clock on the wall.

"Well, that gives us more information," The Doctor mused.

"So, at this point, anything that has come into contact with the objects has disappeared, except for you, Doctor."

"But that's not true, remember?" Bill primed.

"Oh yes, that's right - Mattingly." Bowtie filled the Doctor in on what they had discussed about Mattingly and their two theories about why Mattingly and the Doctor were seemingly not affected.

"What do you think, Doctor?"

"I think you've all put a lot of thought into it. It's possible that species that don't have a lot of psychic ability are more sensitive to them. Bohrium, which is typically in solid form under earth-like conditions, is in its gaseous state at the edges of the rift.

"As a gas, it could amplify psychic ability. Unfortunately, it also has a disastrous effect on time lords, and a slightly less disastrous effect on zygons. Those objects have an internal liquid layer. What if it's actually liquid bohrium? It could be slowly leaching out and converting to a gas. But I wasn't affected when I examined the objects." The Doctor's brows drew down in concentration. Bill smiled a little. He wore the same intense expression she often saw during his lectures.

"What else could be in those objects that boosts psychic ability?"

Kate returned to the lab, her face solemn, mobile still clasped in her hand.

"Doctor, we've had word from NASA. Those two probes the ISS astronauts sent into the rift? Well, they sent back video feed, which the analysts are looking at now."

"That's great, news, Kate! Should I get on a call with NASA?" Kate nodded to Bowtie.

"Yes, please, Osgood." The Osgood in question left the lab.

"But Doctor, we also received an audio message."

"What did it say?" Bill thought the Doctor looked like he already had an idea of what the message said.

"It said 'Send me the Doctor.'"

The Doctor paused before responding. His expression conveyed something complicated and perhaps private. "How nice to be remembered."

"You're right, Doctor, this really is all about you."

"Thanks for that, Kate. I knew you'd appreciate it."

And then, with no bother or fanfare, almost as if on cue, the Doctor vanished.


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note:**

Here is a short follow-on to the previous chapter. Reviews are always appreciated!

* * *

 _The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"Where'd he go?"

"Doctor!"

Bill couldn't believe her eyes. He really was gone. Kate sighed.

"I really wish I hadn't said that last thing."

Question Marks gave her arm a squeeze. "I'm sure he'll be fine, Kate. You know the Doctor."

"I'm not so sure about that," Martha said, looking to Kate. "Right now, he's only got one working heart."

That sounded dire and inexplicable to Bill. "How many is he supposed to have?"

"Two. The left one is barely pumping at all."

* * *

If anyone in the lab had been looking at the TARDIS, they might have noticed a faint shimmering colorful aura emanating from underneath the blue box.

Meanwhile, Bowtie, who was unaware of the Doctor's sudden disappearance, walked down the corridor from the lab, headed toward Command Central to get on a conference call with NASA. If she'd been looking ahead, rather than down at her mobile, she might have noticed an eerie glow ghosting out from under the foot-thick, lead-lined door that led to the chamber where those ten round objects were stored.

Nardole, who was in the TARDIS at the time, was well aware that something was awry. During his blundering attempts to contact the Gallifreyan High Council, the cloister bell began to toll. At first, he thought he'd accidentally hit a switch he shouldn't have. But before long he couldn't fail to notice the painful-to-look-at clouds of impossible color that rose from the floor grating.

"Oh. Huh?" His feet were tingling. That couldn't be good. "Boss – help!"

But no one heard Nardole. He was in the TARDIS. _Right. Got to get out._ The numbness in his legs increased as he tried to make his way to the doors. When he looked down at them, he shrieked when he saw he was immersed in a waist-high soup of color.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:**

Here is Chapter 12, corresponding nicely with the delivery of episode 12 of series 10 this weekend. Enjoy!

* * *

 _Truth is what stands the test of experience._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"At last, Doctor. I thought you'd never come."

The Doctor found himself in an elaborate gilded great room. He glanced up at the vaulted ceiling, where an immense crystal chandelier dangled elegantly.

A large banquet table was well appointed with rich silken sashes on the Doctor's right. An ornate hearth graced the back wall with a collection of lavish chairs arranged around it.

Along each wall stood heavy wooden tables sporting large vases of aromatic flowers and grasses. The Doctor noted that they were all indigenous to his home world. Likewise, the fruit in the bowl on the sideboard at the entrance of the hall was of Gallifreyan origin.

In the center of the room stood a throne. Upon the throne sat a man.

He wore the fur-collared cloak of a Gallifrey long gone, before the separation of the classes into orders. The man's hair was long, as was the custom in ancient Gallifrey, with an elegantly trimmed goatee.

"Omega. My, how you've changed."

"The last time we met you demanded that I recreate my body as evidence of my power. What do you think? You will have noted by now that I am not drawing power from the Eye of Harmony."

Like the last time they met, rather than speaking aloud, Omega spoke into the Doctor's mind.

"I really wish you'd stop that. Get out of my head. Talk about ear worms! If your body is so great, let me hear your voice." Omega conceded and spoke aloud, though the Doctor still felt him as a presence in his mind.

"Speech is still unnecessary, and you should save your strength. You are still weak from bohrium exposure. " The Doctor grimaced inwardly. He had hoped his current condition would go unnoticed.

"You can hide nothing from me, Doctor. I learned much from you the last time we met. You cannot trick me again."

The Doctor slid a chair away from the wall and placed it at a safe but casual distance from the throne. He was very tired, indeed. The power transfer to the TARDIS and the conversation with Kate, Bill, Nardole and the Osgoods had used up what little energy he'd regained during the healing trance.

"I am curious about the bohrium, Omega. Am I right that it exists only at the rift between the two universes? How is it that I was not affected when I was transported here just now?"

"I would have thought you would be more interested in my power source, Doctor." The Doctor sighed. _Megalomaniacs. They're all the same. Let's start with a little ego stroking, shall we?_

"Fine. Omega, how did you manage to find an independent power source? When I was last here, this place was nearly an empty void."

"That's better. First, let's get our terminology straight. This isn't just another universe. It is a new universe in another dimension. The dimension of thought."

"Nonsense. There is no 'thought dimension.'"

"Of course you would think that." The Doctor felt Omega's amusement. "You are from the old universe. Yet I created this universe and everything in it with only my mind. I created this flesh and blood body out of the elemental matter that I also created. Anything I conceive of will come to be if I want it to."

The Doctor had another look around the room. Was it all real, or just a mental projection?

"Go ahead – touch me! Go over there and take a piece of fruit. Bite into it. Savor the taste. All real, Doctor."

The Doctor had considered doing something like that already, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. A really good mental projection could still fool the senses, especially right now, when he was weak.

"I will take your word for it for the moment, Omega. Now tell me about your power source." The Doctor's head swam with sudden dizziness. He breathed in and hoped that it would pass before Omega noticed.

"You are weak, indeed, Doctor. How frail your body is, compared to mine."

"Yes, well, I like mine, thank you." The Doctor breathed a moment more until he felt less like he was going to pass out. "The power source."

"That's the beauty of being in the thought dimension. I conceived of an infinite supply of pure plasma. And so it came to be that a new sun was born. And from there, I got all of the building blocks of matter."

A servant entered the hall carrying a tray with two glasses and a bottle. The Doctor watched, dumbstruck, as the woman set the tray on a nearby table to pour a golden liquid into each glass. She departed after placing one glass beside Omega and the other on a small table that suddenly appeared next to the Doctor's chair.

He turned his attention back to Omega, who picked up his glass and sipped the beverage, eyes crinkling closed as he enjoyed the taste.

"Drink, Doctor. It's a restorative cordial that was popular on Gallifrey in my time. I promise, you will feel better."

After hesitating for another moment, the Doctor finally picked up the glass and sampled its contents. The glass was smooth and cool under his hand. The liquid had a pleasant taste, not unlike honey and fermented fruit. His tongue and throat went pleasantly numb as he swallowed. Within a few moments the aching in his joints was noticeably lessened and he felt more clear-headed.

"And where did your servant come from?"

"Ethelbel is a charming girl. I created her, of course, and several others. You could say she is of my conception."

"You created her through sexual intercourse? With whom? Or what?" The Doctor was being purposefully obtuse.

"This body can do that, and believe me, it has. I have many wives and children. But I _conceived of_ her, rather than _conceived_ _her_."

The Doctor knocked on the table. It echoed hollowly, the crystal of his glass shivering slightly at the vibration.

"You created this table just moments ago. You _conceived of_ a living being to come serve us. You produced this room, that wine, those flowers, out of matter you created by thinking up a source of pure plasma. That's impressive, Omega.

"So, why bring me here? You've got this perfect world, with an independent energy source. You're not alone anymore. Why bring in an outsider?"

The Doctor sensed a hint of unrest in the being in front of him and the consciousness in his mind.

"Doctor, millennia ago, when I was on Gallifrey, I was a scientist. I'm still a scientist today.

"I've grown bored, Doctor. And even with all of my creations, I am lonely. No matter what I do, the people I conceive of all end up being subsets of me. They have no free will. No creativity. Not even one original idea. Of all people, I think you'd understand what it's like to be surrounded by supernumeraries."

It was at this point that the Doctor realized he'd brought along a hitchhiker.

 _[So, what he needs is a good old-fashioned archenemy!]_

 _Missy?_ Her presence in his mind felt clear and sharp, as if she was in the room with them, but he knew that was not possible.

 _[Of course. Wouldn't miss this for the world.]_

"Think of the possibilities. If only I could get back to your universe and bring the qualities of this dimension with me. How powerful I would be."

"And I'm sure you would go straight to Gallifrey and share your miraculous power with the time lords. I can see it now, Omega, the worlds you would salvage from war and ruin. The civilizations you would save from the perils of starvation, ecological catastrophe, cataclysmic events. You would truly be a god."

 _[Where are you going with this, friend?]_

 _Shut up._

It was feeling decidedly crowded in the Doctor's head at the moment, but he did feel a bit more hopeful with Missy along for the ride. He also felt a little less exhausted, probably thanks to the cordial. Whether it really had restorative properties or he was experiencing a placebo effect was irrelevant.

He sensed that Omega was a bit taken aback.

"Well, not quite like that, no. But I could do – I _will_ do many great things after I settle a few old scores."

 _[What makes him think he's the only one that can manipulate things in this universe? Some nerve, thinking he's all that and a bag of crisps. You should take him down a peg.]_

The Doctor had been thinking along the same lines. He ignored Omega's heavy presence and also Missy's cheeky background noise and focused all of his attention on one barren stem in a vase of flowers placed on a table outside of Omega's view.

"It took a while to formulate an approach that seemed viable. It started with a set of planned experiments. If I send matter created in this dimension into the universe, will it show up? Will beings in that universe be able to see it, feel it, touch it? Or, will it explode upon contact with the stuff of the universe, like anti-matter and matter?"

After a few seconds of intense concentration, the stem had formed several buds. The Doctor felt the spike of a nasty headache. Even with the discomfort, he worked to keep his features neutral and offer no telepathic evidence that might give him away.

 _[Nice work. Never knew you had a green thumb.]_

With a little more effort, three of the buds bloomed into achingly rich scarlet flowers. Now the spike of pain had grown tentacles that squeezed his brain alarmingly. The Doctor felt beads of sweat on his brow and reeled with sudden nausea.

"You look pale, Doctor. You're neglecting your cordial." The Doctor sensed a sliver of doubt in Omega's consciousness. He raised the glass in a salute to Omega and downed its contents in one gulp. He waited until he felt he could speak without sounding breathless.

"The round objects. That was an experiment. Why did you send them to Earth, of all places?"

"Because you were there. I could sense you there, on the other side of the rift. You always end up on Earth through your sentimental attachments."

"You wanted my attention."

"Of course. I wanted to share my work, one scientist to another."

[ _How dare he put himself in_ our _class!]_

 _Shut up, Missy. I_ mean _it._

"Imagine how surprised I was when earthlings started randomly appearing in my nice neat hall! I didn't expect that, and I wasn't prepared for it."

"The people who came in contact with the objects came to your dimension. But before that, they hallucinated. What's in those objects?" The Doctor felt a twist of irritation coming from Omega.

"I'm coming to that. Let me tell things in their proper order."

 _[OCD as ever.]_

 _Shut up!_

"Maybe back on Earth it looked like they were hallucinating, but they were actually traveling here and I kept trying to send them back. Time moves differently here."

"They saw creatures made of fire." Omega bellowed laughter.

"They're apes! No psychic ability whatsoever. It was a psychic slingshot reaction, and they didn't have the cerebral architecture to deal with it. On your end it probably looked like they were hallucinating, but they were actually seeing their world from my dimension.

"Finally, I gave up and created a containment area for them."

"They're still alive? Take me to them!"

"In good time, Doctor. I have more to tell."

 _[Windbag.]_

The Doctor ignored Missy.

"Interestingly, other objects began appearing, as well. I surmise they had all been in contact with my spheres."

"UNIT sent missiles to intercept the second batch of objects, but they vanished into the rift. What did you do with them?"

"I decided they didn't exist. And they didn't, once they passed through the rift.

"But what I found particularly fascinating was how long it took you to end up here, Doctor. I could sense that you interacted with the spheres, and fully expected you to show up on my doorstep through the boomerang affect. I even tried to pull your TARDIS in when you so thoughtfully returned my second batch of spheres in such a clever way. Finally, I had to send you an engraved invitation and literally pull you into this dimension. Very frustrating!"

"Well, I try."

"Why weren't you susceptible to the boomerang affect of the spheres?"

 _[Ooh ooh - I know this one!]_

So did the Doctor, but he played coy.

"I've been wondering that myself. Have you got a theory?"

"Of course. Only beings with little or no psychic ability are susceptible. The more psychic you are, the weaker their affect."

"Which leads us back to my question. What's in them? The outer shell is a composite of the hardest substances known, but what's inside?" The Doctor sensed Omega's narcissistic pride.

"Well, that's for phase two of my experiment – bringing my matter to your universe. If I can do that, then I, too, can return."


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note:**

Thanks so much for the follows, favorites and reviews! I had to split this chapter. We're with Nardole and the Doctor in this one.

* * *

 _No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

Nardole gradually became aware that the psychedelic haze was clearing from the TARDIS. He had no idea how long he was immersed in the stuff, or if perhaps it was all just a bad hallucination. His legs felt fine, now. Thinking back, he wondered if they'd really gone numb at all, or if his mind just made them numb when he couldn't see them through the colorful cloud. Hard to tell when one or more components of each leg came from spare parts collected and somewhat haphazardly assembled in the TARDIS workshop.

The console room appeared to fade in from behind the dissipating haze. Before long, everything was as it should be. With a sigh of relief, Nardole strode through the TARDIS door, anxious to report what happened.

"Doctor, the strangest thing just happened…" His words trailed off. He wasn't in the lab. The Doctor, Bill, and the UNIT folks were nowhere in sight.

"Huh?"

Instead, Nardole found himself in a strange white expanse. He couldn't tell if he was indoors or out. He felt no breeze and heard no sounds that might indicate he was outside. The walls, if they were walls, were vague and nebulous. Littered across the space (floor?) was a worrisome collection of artifacts. Right at his feet lay an inert service drone of some sort. He stooped to pick it up. The NASA emblem was emblazoned on its side. Looking a little further afield, Nardole saw several more of the devices littered around the place.

Also in evidence was a loose assortment of medical or scientific gear. Nardole saw two different decontamination suits, a forceps, an aluminum specimen tray, and various other remnants. Next to that pile was a military lorry with two sturdy looking metal crates on the back.

But the true centerpiece was the sleek American jet, which stood impressively just ahead of him, as if challenging him to approach.

"Right." Nardole pivoted and returned to the TARDIS. Clearly something had happened while he was swallowed up in the cloud of color. _I'll just pop back to UNIT HQ, and everything will be fine,_ he thought.

Only the controls didn't respond to his touch. Every status light was green though, so it didn't look like anything was amiss with the TARDIS.

"Really? You would pull this now?"

After a bit of hemming and hawing, he decided to follow the Doctor principle – If you're there, you might as well look around.

* * *

Ethelbel returned to refill their glasses and then left again. The Doctor had another sip of his cordial. The blistering headache was receding, though every once in a while he felt a threatening pulse of pain that prevented further attempts to experiment with shaping matter with his mind.

"As you surmised, Doctor, bohrium exists in a gaseous state at the rift. It is the byproduct of mixing the matter of this universe, which I call 'O Matter,' with that of yours."

The Doctor decided that under no circumstances would he use the term 'O Matter.'

"You can't leave, then."

"Neither can you. If you do, you'll die."

 _[Now he shouldn't have said that. What do we always do when we hear the word 'no'?]_

 _Speak for yourself, Missy._

"I survived last time."

"Barely. And there was a lot less matter here last time."

The Doctor nodded slowly.

"Can you modify your body to make it immune to bohrium?"

"I am afraid not. Not without giving up the ability to control matter in this universe."

"Yet you say you are testing a hypothesis. Phase two of your experiment with the objects."

"Yes. It's one thing to send O Matter into another universe and have it survive the journey. But the much more critical task of converting the stuff of the destination universe into O Matter is quite another."

 _[Look who's going to win the science fair this year!]_

"Converting – why would you do that?" The Doctor was pretty sure he already knew why. Dread smoldered in his belly. He'd suspected the purpose of those objects from the start. But he thought it was an invasion. What Omega had planned was much, much worse.

"It's actually much simpler than I originally thought. When you first arrived, you asked me how you moved from your universe to mine without exposure to bohrium." The Doctor failed to see the connective tissue between the new topic and his earlier question, but went with it.

"And I still await your answer."

 _[Someone's getting testy!]_

 _I'm not talking to you._

 _[Testy!]_

 _Shut up._

"Matter coming into my universe is fine. It's when the O Matter leaves my universe on its way to yours that bohrium is produced. When I discovered that, I also discovered the mechanism for sending O Matter through. I encased it in bohrium. Then, I encased the bohrium in a tough mineral compound as it exited the rift and entered your universe to protect it."

"The bohrium was probably a gas when you formed your objects, but by the time it reached Earth it was a liquid." Bohrium in its gaseous state was the most deadly form for time lords and zygons. The fact that it was in a liquid state within the spheres might explain why the Doctor was not affected at the time.

"And, left to its own devices, it would become solid and then wink out of existence. Hence the mineral shell."

The Doctor sighed. "And as time moves on, the trans-dimensional matter eats through the bohrium and the mineral composite and begins converting normal matter to trans-dimensional matter. I imagine once the process starts, the more matter it comes into contact with, the faster it goes."

"That is correct. Once enough matter is converted to O Matter, I will send myself through the rift in a capsule made of the same material as my spheres. I'm not sure how long the process will take. Once Earth is converted I will go there and wait for the rest of the galaxy to go through the process. By then, the time lords will likely have noticed."

Omega looked smug at the idea of getting the time lords' attention in such a way. A silence descended, in which the ancient Gallifreyan seemed to fall into the fantasy of his revenge. The Doctor let a few moments pass before he cleared his throat and spoke.

"Back to the spheres, and why the humans were transported here. The bohrium must leach out along with the trans-dimensional matter. Bohrium affects the brain centers that manage psychic functions, like telepathy and teleportation."

"The bohrium may boost psychic functions. The O matter may also play a role." _Osgood, you were at least partially right._

Fascinating. Before now, the Doctor surmised that humans were not affected by bohrium. Based on Omega's explanation, though, perhaps humans were even more susceptible to it than time lords, but in a very different way.

"And what will you do with the people? What kind of condition are they in?"

Omega rose from his throne. "They are well, Doctor. Captive, but well. Come with me – I will show you."


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note:**

Thanks so much for the follows, favorites and reviews! We're looking in on the folks back at UNIT, and then are back with the Doctor and Nardole.

* * *

 _Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

Something was happening.

It was just after the Doctor vanished right in front of them and Martha divulged the worrisome fact that only one of the Doctor's two hearts was functioning. Bill turned to dash into the TARDIS to get Nardole only to find that the blue box was gone from its corner.

"Hey – the TARDIS is gone!" Kate, Question Marks and Martha all turned toward Bill. Question Marks was the first to notice that something else was wrong.

"Something's going on with the floor. Do you guys see that?"

The floor in the corner where the TARDIS was previously parked was gone. In its place was a dense, colorful gas.

"Kate – don't go near it!" Kate halted her progress at Osgood's words.

"You're right, of course. So, we're all seeing it. Does that mean this isn't a hallucination?"

Question Marks pulled out her mobile and started taking pictures. _Good idea_ , Bill thought, recalling the bizarre images on Captain Blake's phone.

"It looks almost like fire," Martha offered. Bill recalled that the physician likely didn't have all of the background on the situation, just the bits that had to do with the Doctor's health.

While they all watched, the colorful gas began slowly inching up the wall. Wherever it touched, the wall seemed to vanish.

"Okay, this can't be good. Osgood, go get your sister." Question Marks nodded and dashed out the door.

"Martha, you're pregnant and shouldn't be exposed to whatever this is. Let me call an escort to take you home."

"I'll stay, thanks." That protective hand was back on her distended belly. "The Doctor needs my help. I don't know where he went, but I want to be here and ready in case he comes back."

Kate looked to the disappearing corner and then back to Bill and Martha. Bill could see the chief science officer mentally ticking through their options. _If only the Doctor were here. He'd zap it with his sonic and know exactly what it was._

"Right. Well, the phenomena seems to be localized right now, so let's keep an eye on it until the Osgoods get back. They may have a theory as to what this is and what it means."

A few minutes ticked by silently. They watched the gas consume another square foot of wall surface. More of the floor had also disappeared.

"It seems to be going faster now," Bill observed. Kate clenched her jaw.

Question Marks returned to the lab. Bowtie was not with her.

"There's more in the hallway, where the containment room was. The hallway's impassable. We're cut off from the rest of the building."

* * *

"Osgood, are you in the command center?" Kate called Bowtie on her mobile as soon as they discovered the impasse in the hallway.

"Yeah, just got here. What's up?"

Kate put the phone on speaker and set it on the table so Question Marks, Bill and Martha could also hear.

Question Marks responded to her sister.

"Something's happening. The Doctor vanished. Then we noticed that the TARDIS is gone. The room seems to be dissolving where it stood. It's an anomaly. The same phenomenon seems to be happening just down the hall, where the objects were held. The hallway is impassable. We're trapped between the lab and the containment area. I've sent you pictures."

A few moments spun out while Bowtie presumably looked at the pictures.

"Hmm. Any chance you've been able to take a sample? We could run it through the gas chromatograph to find out the composition."

"It's not safe to go near it. It consumes anything it touches."

"Oh." Silence from Bowtie's end of the line, and then "How fast is it moving?"

Question Marks glanced at her watch. "The Doctor vanished four minutes ago. It was only a few moments after that when we noticed the TARDIS was gone and the floor underneath it was dissolving. In that time, it's progressed out another six inches into the room and up the wall."

"It started under the TARDIS?"

"It appears so. Does that mean something?"

"Maybe. I was just thinking about the localization to the TARDIS and the containment room. Both areas had exposure to the objects."

Kate broke in on the verbal tennis match between the two Osgoods. "By my calculations, we have another twenty five minutes before the whole lab is gone. Maybe thirty, but I wouldn't think so. It's picking up speed. We need some options for containing the effect."

"Hang on, Kate – " Bowtie muted her end of the line. The trio back in the disappearing lab waited pensively. At last, she got back on the line.

"Kate, we've just had a call from our detail in the Sahara. The vault holding the objects has vanished, and the same effect seems to be happening there. They sent video footage."

From Command Central, Bowtie managed to project the short video on the LCD screen in the lab. Bill's mouth went dry when she saw what at first looked like a large bonfire. Then, she saw that the colorful gas was spreading out into the desert from a large hole that must have held the containment vault.

"We're checking with Cal-Tech now. If I'm right, they're likely seeing the same phenomenon there."

"Osgood, please reach out to your contacts at NASA, SETI and the European Space Agency. Let them know what is going on. We need to focus on containing the disturbance and moving to a safer location. Assume you're going to lose contact with us sometime soon. If we disappear or communication is disrupted, you are in command. Understood?"

There was a brief pause before Bowtie replied. "Understood, Ma'am. Stay safe, all of you."

Kate disconnected the call.

* * *

"Aren't they fascinating? They've only been here for a short while, yet they've formed their own little civilization out there."

'Out there' was a passably familiar looking area just on the other side of one of the many doors in Omega's great hall. The set up reminded the Doctor of the frontier-style living enjoyed in in nineteenth century North America. He saw several ramshackle buildings fashioned out of wood on the perimeter of an outdoor gathering place.

An old hand pump for water stood beside a hitching post. There were no horses in evidence. Some of the buildings looked like businesses, where others appeared to be residences. The centerpiece was a large bonfire topped by a tripod that supported a large cooking pot. Several long wooden tables were arranged around the fire, presumably for dining.

The Doctor estimated there were about thirty five men and women of various ethnicities and an assortment of different uniforms gathered around the fire – some seated at the tables, and others at work on various activities one might expect in a small, frontier-style community.

Their clothing was ragged. Their hair, for those who had any, was long and gray. If these were the individuals from the initial recovery mission and the military people involved in transportation of the objects, they had all aged considerably.

"Really, Omega? Is that the best you could do for them? The American West?"

Omega chuckled.

"I plucked it out of that tall one's mind. My intent was to create a comfortable, familiar environment."

"Well, you got it wrong, friend. By about two hundred years. Back home, these people had electricity. Light. Running water. Sewer systems. Advanced technology. You gave them a campfire, a privy and primitive shacks."

"They have everything they need, though. I've made a study of them. I know they're just apes, but they really are fascinating. All those emotions! So much drama in their lives, even here, where they don't have to worry about anything."

"Except for getting back home. Really, Omega, you've got no empathy at all."

Even as the Doctor said that, he automatically cast about until he found the consciousness of the tall gray man who had perhaps watched _Gunsmoke_ when he was a child. He wore the remnants of a UNIT Captain's uniform. It was Blake.

 _You! You're the Doctor! You've got to get us out of here!_

The Doctor ignored the twinge of pain that came with the exertion of reaching out telepathically. _He's human, and yet he can hear me and respond,_ the Doctor thought. _Is it this place, or the after-effects of the bohrium?_

 _Captain Blake, don't look at me, or act as if you know me. I'm working on a plan to get you all home._

 _Mattingly – is she okay?_

"Doctor, you've gone silent. What are you thinking?" Omega's gaze was piercing. The Doctor felt his presence more strongly in his mind. He redoubled his efforts to show no sign, psychic or otherwise, that anything was going on. But he didn't think he could keep it up much longer.

 _She's fine, Blake. I will see you later. Wait. And be ready._

The Doctor turned his back to the open doorway. "What about those objects that came through? Where are those?"

"Very well, I will show you, though I don't know why you care. They are merely castoff remnants from your universe."

Omega shut the door on the human community and walked over to yet another door. The Doctor followed. As he did, he felt a queer spark of anticipation.

 _[What's got you all excited?]_

 _Don't know yet. And shut up._

The door opened onto yet another large space. Unlike the human settlement, this was much more like the bland emptiness the Doctor encountered on his previous visit with Omega. In this white amorphous space was a dumping ground of random artifacts, as advertised. The Doctor recognized most of them. He assumed the jet was the one used to transport the objects from Africa to California.

And then that queer spark of anticipation turned into a cascade of emotion.

 _My Thief!_

The TARDIS was there, amongst the junk.

The Doctor tore his eyes away from the blue box, not wanting to draw attention to it. And then he saw Nardole standing beneath the American jet. His left heart stuttered in his chest. Nardole already had his hand up and was likely about to call out to the Doctor.

Not even thinking about it, the Doctor pushed out at Nardole as hard as he could.

 _STAY SILENT. GET BACK IN THE TARDIS. NOW!_

He felt his nose start to bleed. The vision out of his left eye took on a pink tinge. He gagged with the pain and staggered in the doorway. Omega grasped his arm to steady him.

"What are you doing, Doctor?" The Doctor wiped his nose with the back of his hand. It came away slick with blood. Gross.

"Doing? Nothing. It's the bohrium exposure. I think I need to sit down. And I could use some more of that cordial."

When the Doctor glanced back out the door as Omega swung it shut, he saw no trace of Nardole.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note:**

Here is a short mid-week chapter. Starting work on the next. Thanks for sticking with this story!

* * *

 _Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

Nardole was just working out how he might board the American jet when the oddest thing happened. He heard the sound of a door opening, though he had not as yet seen a door anywhere around. He looked up just as two men stepped through the wall almost directly in front of him into the stark white space.

One of them was the Doctor. _Well, thank the gods._ Nardole thought he looked very pale. The other gentleman looked a little odd, with long hair and archaic clothing. Nardole surmised he was a time lord.

Nardole was just about to call out when the Doctor spied him. His face registered surprise that changed quickly to a severe expression.

And then Nardole felt a sharp pain in his head and a loud command to get back in the TARDIS. Still stunned by the mental invasion, he complied automatically, and found himself on the other side of the TARDIS door before he really registered what happened.

* * *

The Doctor eased back into his chair. His nose was still bleeding. The room had gone hazy. He sensed Omega studying him speculatively. The cordial glass next to him refilled on its own. When he felt up to it, he picked up the glass and drained it. The sweet liquid wanted to come right back up, but the Doctor leaned back in the chair and breathed slowly until the feeling passed.

"I suspect you are up to something, Doctor. Your mind is closed to me."

 _[Ooh, someone's peeking!]_

Missy must be doing something to block Omega, the Doctor thought. At this point, he had no defenses of his own.

"I'm not well, Omega. Something in your world is making me worse. Are you sure there's no bohrium here?"

"Of course not! I would be equally affected."

The Doctor breathed for a few moments. His vision had sharpened a bit, but his head was still throbbing. Perhaps there were some things the cordial could not fix.

"The settlement where the people are. How much of that did you construct, and how much did they build? The fire, for instance. Did they make the fire, or did you? How do they find food?"

Omega rolled his eyes. "Details! You bore me, Doctor. It's much easier to do than explain."

Omega launched into an explanation of minutia that the Doctor had no interest in, but it bought him time to recover and plan.

 _[You're going to put a shell around the TARDIS.]_

 _Got it in one. Only I don't know if I can at this point. Without help, that is._

 _[Why would I help you, Doctor? You've got me locked up in a vault on Earth.]_

 _You said you wanted to learn how to be good. This is an opportunity to try it out. But can you? You're not physically here. I don't suppose you've already tried…_

At the Doctor's thought, he saw all the flowers in all the vases around the room suddenly bloom.

 _How are you doing that?_

 _[Dunno. Booster effect, I suppose. Isn't it great? That's probably why you're coming in so clearly even though we're in different dimensions. Probably why that human heard you, as well.]_

 _You know what to do, then? Because I don't think I can hold out much longer._

 _[Don't wait on me, friend, I'm way ahead of you.]_

The Doctor closed his eyes and reached out to the TARDIS. It was easier than he expected – probably because the TARDIS was also reaching out to him. Within seconds he felt her energy surround him. It took a few more seconds for the TARDIS to materialize around him. He opened his eyes to see Omega through an increasingly opaque blue filter as the TARDIS solidified.

Omega had been looking elsewhere as he expounded on the cleverness and ingenuity of his creation of the communal space that housed the humans, but the sound of the TARDIS materializing and then dematerializing caught his attention.

"No!"

The Doctor saw Omega's lips shout the word and also heard it in his head, but it faded quickly as the console room came into vivid existence around him. Nardole looked on from where he stood by the console, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open with surprise.

The Doctor became aware that, regrettably, the chair he'd been sitting in didn't make the journey with him. He stumbled, tried to right himself, and promptly fell over in a heap on the floor.

"Doctor!" Nardole was at his side. The look on his face led the Doctor to believe that perhaps he didn't look his best. He pushed himself up on one elbow.

"I'm okay, Nardole. Well, not okay, maybe. We're getting out of here. But first, we need to rescue some people."


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's Note:**

Posting this a day late, sorry for that. I'm finalizing a major deliverable for work and my focus was there. It was a nice break to get to pick this up again. The next chapter likely won't be up until next weekend. Enjoy, and, as always, thanks for your follows, favorites and comments!

* * *

 _In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

 _[Something's not right in here, you know. And why are you doing that? No – we're supposed to leave, not rescue those scraggly humans. Probably haven't bathed in years. Oh – fine, if you must. But I'm not responsible if we end up trapped here because you took too long and Omega figured out what you're doing.]_

…

 _[Hey, something's really not right in here, Doctor. It's getting crowded. And dark.]_

* * *

After several attempts to keep the Doctor lying down on the floor of the console room, Nardole finally gave up and offered an arm. At least the cantankerous time lord let Nardole assist him.

But once he was on his feet, the Doctor stumbled and almost reclaimed his spot on the floor. Nardole steadied him and helped him make his way to the other side of the console. The time lord had acquired a significant starboard list.

"Well, at least talk to me! What was that place? And who was that man you were with? Wait – that wasn't Omega, was it?"

The Doctor grumbled something unintelligible while scanning the surface of the console for something. Finally, seeing the telepathic controls, he gave a relieved sigh and sank the fingers of both hands into them. That's when Nardole noticed that the Doctor's left hand was curled into a claw.

"Doctor, what happened to your hand?"

The time lord ignored him, closing his eyes and focusing his attention on where he wanted the TARDIS to go.

"You don't have to do that, you know. I can get us back to UNIT-"

But the TARDIS dematerialized and then materialized again within a second. So, not going home just yet.

"Where are we?"

The Doctor looked up at Nardole from where he slouched against the console. His left eye was bloodshot. When he answered Nardole's question, though, what came out was a string of gibberish.

"I think the TARDIS translation circuit might be out. I didn't catch any of that. Can you understand me?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes and nodded. He repeated himself, but Nardole still couldn't understand. Then, Nardole noticed that the left side of the Doctor's mouth was drooping.

"My gods! Doctor, I think you've had a stroke!" The Doctor winced and raised a hand to his head, in obvious pain.

As the time lord gradually slid back to the floor, Nardole felt a sudden sharp pain in his own head, similarly to what he felt when the Doctor commanded him to go back into the TARDIS.

 _[Hello, Baldie. Fancy a visit?]_

"Who the hell are you?" Nardole said aloud, massaging the back of his neck. He was suddenly giddy with the queer sensation that someone had just entered his head.

 _[No time for that. Look, we have some guests we need to let on board the good ship lollipop. Would you be so kind as to get the door?]_

The layers of sarcasm in the thought/voice were so thick that even Nardole couldn't miss it.

"Wait. Is this _Missy_?"

 _[The one and only. Now_ get the door _.]_

Even as Nardole wondered if Missy had somehow caused the Doctor's stroke, if it actually was a stroke, he found himself walking over to the door and opening it.

Just outside was a crowd of ragtag humanoids. They were watching the TARDIS expectantly. One tall man in the front of the throng stepped forward.

"Are you here to save us? Where is the Doctor?"

Nardole looked back to the crumpled heap under the console.

 _[There's no time for this. Step aside!]_

Nardole felt as if he was shoved out of the way as Missy came to the front of his consciousness. He listened in surprise as his mouth opened and his own voice shouted words that were formed by another.

"Come inside. Hurry – we don't have long. I can take you home."

* * *

Unfortunately, the consumption of the room and the hallway accelerated exponentially. Bill, Martha, Question Marks and Kate were now pressed into the farthest corner of what remained of Osgood's lab when Bill heard the wonderful sound of the TARDIS materializing.

"Let's hope that's a good sign," Kate said, "only I'm not sure what will happen if it materializes in all of this."

'All of this,' of course, was the colorful haze that had covered and demolished most of the room.

The TARDIS wheezed and groaned and faded in and out of existence for what seemed a very long time to Bill. Something was also different about the exterior, though she struggled to define the difference.

"Look at her! It's almost as if she's wrapped in something."

Question Marks seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Bill. "I think it's a protective shield. Doctor – are you in there? You mustn't land. We have some—instability here."

Whether the Doctor heard her or not, the TARDIS faded away again, only to reform around them.

"What the-"

"Doctor?"

"It IS bigger on the inside!"

As the console room solidified around them Bill immediately saw that they had company. While the console room was quite large, with thirty or so people hanging about it felt a bit crowded. Nardole gaped at her with an unreadable expression. Bill thought he looked like he was in shock.

Martha let out an excited shriek, apparently glad to be out of the disappearing room and back into the TARDIS after a long time away. Kate seemed to be trying to look everywhere at once. She looked poised for a fight. Bill surmised she had never been on the TARDIS before.

Question Marks quickly took in her surroundings and then immediately fell to her knees beside the prostrate form under the console. Martha quickly joined her. Bill followed suit, only to be fetched up sharply by a viselike grip on her shoulder. It was Nardole.

"He'll be looked after, albeit by incompetent primitives who will no doubt scramble his brains even further. I need you to deal with these people."

There was something off about his voice. Was that sarcasm?

"Captain Blake – is that you?" Kate approached a tall, thin older man in a tattered UNIT uniform.

"Kate Stewart! I'm glad to see you. What news do you have of Mattingly? I can feel her. She's close. We must save her. She's very important."

Kate was still staring at the man as if she were seeing a ghost.

"Save the family reunion for later! Chop chop – you humans be nice and follow Miss Potts here through that door. Kate, you too. Mummy's got to fly the magic space ship out of harm's way."

 _Mummy?_ Bill thought, _did he just say Mummy?_ Nardole gestured to the door that led to the interior of the TARDIS. Before she could ask where she was taking the people, the delloran shoved her roughly in the direction of the door.

"Right. Erm, this way, please…"

As the people queued up behind her and Bill strode toward the interior door she stole a glance downward at where the Doctor lay, tended to by Question Marks and Martha. His eyes were closed and his face was ashen. He wasn't moving at all.

As soon as Bill was through the door, Kate squeezed her arm and spoke in a low voice for Bill's ears alone. "I know that voice. That's not Nardole. I think we're in a lot of trouble."


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's Note:**

Here's the next installment – sorry it's a bit late. Getting to work on the next one. Thanks for sticking with this story!

* * *

 _If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

The TARDIS landed with its signature booming noise. Nardole cringed, worried about where Missy might have taken them. While she was in the front of his mind, she somehow blocked his ability to see into her thoughts and motives.

Martha and the Osgood that gave him the creeps had loaded the doctor onto a gurney that suddenly pushed its way through the interior door into the console room, no doubt summoned by the TARDIS. Together, they wheeled him back through the interior door, en route to med bay. Nardole was very worried for the Doctor, especially with Missy loose and wielding a seemingly enhanced telepathic ability.

Nardole had never been very good at head stuff. And the Doctor had mentioned on more than one occasion that Missy was a very strong telepath and that Nardole should take precautions whenever he was in or even near the vault. Now, here he was, a passenger in his own body, watching helplessly as Missy opened the door with his hand and gazed out at their surroundings through his eyes.

They were inside the vault, Nardole saw. Missy's body sat in a lotus position on the floor, spine painfully erect, head level, eyes closed, arms draped across each corresponding knee, palms upward.

And then Nardole felt a rushing sensation, like the feel of the cool water of a babbling brook, as Missy's consciousness left him. As she left, Nardole found that he felt a little nauseous and also curiously diminished and lonely.

Missy gasped and opened her eyes.

"Oh that's ever so much better!" She rubbed gently at her temples, eyes crinkled with pleasure. "Plenty of space to move around. I was getting claustrophobic in your tiny little head." She bounced nimbly to her feet and returned to the TARDIS.

"Well, let's go then, egg man. Can't hang about in here all day."

"But, Missy – " He found himself following the female time lord into the TARDIS. She had the door shut in a trice and hastily typed coordinates into the console.

"Just shut it, will you?"

"But where are we going? We've got the humans, and-" Missy stopped him with a pointed glare. Nardole's arms broke out in gooseflesh.

"I. Said. Shut. It. We're going back to UNIT, of course."

"But we just left there! And it's disintegrating."

"That's why we've got to go back. I need to hook up with this Mattingly person, so I can be 'good.'"

* * *

"Where are we going now? Is this a space ship? It looks much bigger on the inside, doesn't it?"

Bill and Kate steered the aging UNIT Captain toward a nice squishy chair by the fireplace. They hadn't walked far down the TARDIS corridor before stumbling upon a vast wood-paneled room with several sofas, coffee tables, clusters of chairs, and fireplaces. If Bill didn't know better, she'd say she was in the lobby of a posh London hotel.

It was precisely the room this large group needed after their odd stay in Omega's dimension. Several sideboards against the wall sported carafes of water, hot water for tea, and trays with a selection of baked goods. The group of aging survivors fanned out and explored the room, babbling excitedly. Bill was fascinated that this room was just here when they needed it, where last time she was on the TARDIS, this was the location of the loo. _Maybe this is where JK Rowling got her inspiration for The Room of Requirement,_ Bill mused. She vowed to ask the Doctor if the author had ever been on board.

"It's the Doctor's TARDIS. It travels through time and space." Kate kept a comforting arm on Blake's shoulder. He seemed only slightly less gob smacked than the rest of the humans.

"Where is the bald one taking us? He looks one way, but he sounds much different in my head. I don't think he is who he appears to be."

"Do you hear voices in your head?" Bill was careful with the tone of voice she used to deliver the question.

"Oh yes. It started a little before I was taken from UNIT. It was just soft background noise, at first, sort of like music, or someone whispering in your ear. But then it's gotten much stronger over the years." Bill looked pointedly at Kate, who shook her head slightly.

"What do they say?"

"They don't always talk. A lot of the time it's more like feelings. I can pick it up better than anyone else. I knew the Doctor was there before he appeared because I could hear him talking to _him_."

" _Him_? Do you mean Nardole?"

"No. Our captor. The ancient one." Blake shivered involuntarily. Kate rubbed his arm.

"He's going to come for us. He's very angry."

"You can still hear him?" Blake nodded.

"I can also hear Mattingly. She is very strong. Something's going on at UNIT, isn't it?" Blake looked earnestly at the chief science officer. Bill thought he looked shell-shocked, as if he'd been through a war.

"Yes," Kate confirmed, "We don't understand it yet, but we suspect it has something to do with the place you were in."

"He's converting matter from regular matter to something he calls 'O Matter.' He thinks if he can change matter, he can come back and rule the universe. Mattingly thinks she can stop him, but she isn't strong enough. He will kill her. He'll kill everything, in the end."

* * *

In the TARDIS med bay, Martha stood over her patient, using a penlight to peer in turn into each unresponsive eye. Osgood loosened the Doctor's cravat and unbuttoned his collar. The time lord was paler than she had ever seen him. Drying blood crusted under his nose, around each ear, and grew tacky on the front of his once pristine white shirt. She could smell the coppery tang of blood and wondered if the composition of his blood was any different than her own.

"Do you know how to use any of this equipment?" The pregnant physician glanced around and hesitantly shook her head.

"I'm afraid not. I travelled with the Doctor years ago when I was a med student, and it really wasn't for very long."

Martha checked his carotid pulse again.

"How is he?"

"Not good. He's had some sort of CVA – that's cerebral-vascular accident. Basically, a brain bleed. Both hearts are beating right now, but the left one is still very weak. Then there's the blood loss. I don't like his color, and his blood pressure is very low, compared to what was listed in Doctor Sullivan's notes as normal blood pressure for a time lord.

"I'm worried about pressure in his head. There's a lot wrong, but that's the highest priority at this point. In a human, we'd do surgery to alleviate the cranial pressure."

"But he's not human."

"No, he isn't."

Just then, the monitor on the wall closest to the Doctor's gurney turned on. Osgood explored it hopefully. Several symbols danced across the screen in a repeated pattern, ending in an image of a cartoon finger pressing a button in the bottom right corner of the screen.

"Maybe it's a tutorial, hey?" Osgood pressed the button.

An animated video showed a cartoon Martha, equally pregnant and sporting a lab coat, opening a nearby drawer and taking out a handheld device. Martha hastened to emulate the video, drawing out a device that looked like some sort of scanner with a wand in a holster on the side.

After watching another snippet of video, she powered it on and used it to carefully scan the Doctor's head. A colorful image began to appear on the wall monitor. Martha repeated the scanning gesture until the image looked complete. Both women studied it pensively.

A gray grid appeared and overlaid the three-dimensional image of the Doctor's brain. Apparently, the software (if it was software, Osgood thought) had analytic protocols. One sector of the grid turned red and then expanded to show more detail.

"Okay, so that must be the location of the brain bleed. If he were human, that would be his parahyppocampal gyrus. It looks serious – a major blowout. He's bled heavily into his cranium and his brain may be swelling. I can't tell because it's not a human brain."

Osgood sighed. Nothing Martha had said so far about the Doctor's condition sounded even remotely encouraging. "So, what can we do for him?"

Martha looked at her hands, where they lay against the Doctor's arm. "I wish I knew."

The monitor flashed to life again.


	18. Chapter 18

**Author's Note:**

This chapter goes slightly AU. In Season 10, Bill doesn't meet Missy until _Lie of the Land_ , but she's actually going to cross paths with her here. Folks, I love writing this stuff! Thanks for sticking with this story, and for the follows, favorites, and reviews.

* * *

 _A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"The most recent satellite images of Africa show a twenty percent loss of land mass. We used drones for aerial fly-overs which confirmed what we were seeing before we lost communication with them. Casualties are estimated at 20,000. Thank God this is happening in the Sahara, and not down town Ghana." This tidbit of cheery news was from one of twenty or so anonymous operatives currently on duty at UNIT Command Central.

While Osgood had her share of time visiting CC, she was more accustomed to and comfortable supporting Kate when she was in Command Central via phone from the lab.

"We've lost all contact with Cal-Tech. Our US contacts say that most of Berkeley is gone, and dissolution of surrounding communities is imminent. Local military units are currently evacuating a hundred-mile radius. NORAD is at DEFCON one."

Osgood frowned down at her mobile, where she was receiving equally dire reports from her contacts at NASA, SETI and the European Space Agency. "Thank you. What is our current situation?"

"Based on our CCTV cameras, fifty percent of the UNIT HQ compound is gone. While it's hard to say at this point, I estimate we've lost about two hundred personnel. What remains is the military barracks on the south side of the compound and other areas directly adjacent to us here in Command Central. From the way it's moving, the south barracks won't be with us much longer."

"How long have we got?"

"I'd say five minutes, Ma'am."

"Can we evacuate?"

"Unlikely. The disturbance has cut off access to the helipad and all points of road egress. It started in the lab and spread outward from there. Basically, we're on an island in the middle of a sea of the gaseous material, and it's closing in on us."

Osgood turned away from the floor of Command Central, again consulting her mobile. Still no word from Kate or her sister. She had to assume they were lost, along with Bill, Nardole, Martha, and, of course, the Doctor.

Osgood never expected to be in a leadership role, and yet, here she was. _I'm a scientist, not a strategist_. And yet with her in depth knowledge of and experience with the Doctor, along with her considerable scientific credentials, she really was the best they had at the moment. What a pickle they were in.

In the back of her mind, she felt a dense mixture of fear, anxiety and a myriad of other negative emotions coming from the individuals in the room. It was almost unbearable, but Osgood was made of stern stuff. She took a deep, calming breath and turned back to the waiting command team.

"Right. Well, let's mobilize the troops in the barracks, and any other remaining personnel. Alert all Captains to muster their teams and bring them here. We'll find room for them somewhere."

 _What a lousy plan_ , Osgood thought. Surely, if Kate were here, she'd find a way out.

"Ma'am?" Finally, a familiar face. Osgood acknowledged Jac, a UNIT operative she worked closely with over the years since the zygon inversion.

The poor woman had been thought dead at the hands of a zygon splinter group, but later was discovered in a zygon hibernation pod, a little out of sorts, but otherwise okay. Jac was one of the few people who could tell the difference between Osgood and her sister.

Like everyone else who made it safely to Command Central from other parts of the base, Jac looked the worse for wear, but still held herself together. Osgood picked up a complex and confusing wave of thoughts and feelings coming from the operative, and wondered what it meant. Captain Sybil Mattingly stood beside Jac.

"You know Captain Mattingly. She needs to talk to you." Jac looked at her meaningfully.

Mattingly pulled her aside to an unoccupied corner of the room.

"Osgood, I am in touch with Captain Blake. He's alive, and so are the other people who vanished early on. Somehow, we've got a psychic connection. I didn't want to say anything for – a number of reasons. It's been going on since he first disappeared. In the past few hours, though, it's gotten really strong. And now, there's another. She's very powerful. She says she has a plan."

That's when Osgood realized that Mattingly had never opened her mouth. She was somehow speaking directly into her mind.

* * *

Bill had detached herself from Kate, Blake and the others to check in on the Doctor. Following a hunch, and also trying to avoid Nardole, who was clearly acting strangely and was likely still in the console room, she meandered down the hall and further into the interior of the TARDIS. Sure enough, Martha and Question Marks had managed to get the Doctor to the med bay.

It was a relief to see that the two women had figured out how to follow instructions that popped up on a myriad of monitors arranged near the beds and different pieces of equipment. Bill surmised that perhaps the TARDIS was too damaged to do that after the Doctor's original exposure to bohrium, but had recovered sufficiently to offer support now.

"Are you sure about this?" Martha's lips pressed together at the question.

"No, I'm not, Osgood. But I know the TARDIS and the Doctor are linked somehow. If the TARDIS thinks this is the right thing to do, we have to go with that and hope for the best."

That didn't sound very encouraging to Bill.

"Maybe we should…" but Bill couldn't finish the sentence.

Bill watched with growing concern as Question Marks operated the lift to slowly lower the Doctor's naked, unconscious body into a rectangular tub of very blue fluid. She was really okay until the fluid began to cover his mouth and nose. She'd hoped for a sign of life, of consciousness. She'd expected his eyes to spring open and for him gasp and splutter out the fluid, but nothing like that happened. He didn't appear to be breathing at all.

Once the Doctor was completely submerged, a glass pane extended out from hinges on the top of the tub, sealing it off.

The monitor displayed a batch of those weird circular symbols that Bill surmised were Gallifreyan, the Doctor's native language. Slowly, they converted into the English word, "Stasis." After a few more seconds, the monitor displayed "Uploading to Matrix…"

Right before the monitor's status changed from "Uploading" to "Upload complete," Bill felt a familiar presence brush through her mind. It was almost as if a gentle breeze moved through her skull from front to back. She couldn't suppress a shudder. A wave of inexplicable sadness passed over her.

Apparently, Martha and Question Marks experienced something similar. Both gasped at the same moment. Question Marks raised a hand to her temple.

"That was the Doctor. I felt him passing through me!" Question Mark's eyes were glistening. Bill felt a huge lump in her throat. Martha looked solemn.

"What does 'uploading' mean? To where? Does that mean he's…" That was another question Bill didn't finish.

"The matrix is a Gallifreyan hard drive that holds the minds of time lords after they die. It's like a massive database of experience the High Council keeps on tap for emergencies. The acting Lord President is connected to the matrix through a psychic link so he, _or she,_ can draw upon the experience of the ages when making decisions."

These words were spoken by a dark haired woman standing in the doorway. Nardole peered nervously over her shoulder. He spied Bill and raised his nearly non-existent eyebrows in an apologetic expression.

"Missy! I should have known you were involved in this somehow." From Question Mark's look of disgust, Bill assumed the woman was not a friend.

She strode gracefully into the room, as if she'd been there many times before. The Victorian dress she wore brought out the vibrant blue of her eyes. As she approached what Bill was coming to think of as the Doctor's coffin, Question Marks took several giant steps away.

"You killed my sister!"

" _What?_ No, that can't be right, your sister is back at UNIT!" _Unless Question Marks had another sister?_ Bill picked up a vibe from Question Marks that told her it was a long story and wasn't relevant at the moment.

Missy smiled at Osgood. "Oh yes, I remember that! Smashed her glasses, too." The smile never reached the newcomer's eyes and disappeared as soon as it arrived. She turned her attention to where the Doctor's body floated in the blue fluid.

Nardole's eyes were transfixed by the Doctor's seemingly lifeless body. A high-pitched sound escaped him that conveyed shock and grief.

Missy pressed a hand reverently against the top of the tank and closed her eyes. Bill felt something like a distant echo in her head that said, "Sleep well, friend." _Was that_ Missy _? Did Missy just speak into my mind?_

"No, idiot, I was talking to the Doctor. You just overheard me."

"We all did, actually," Martha said. The physician had a queer expression on her face. "And you're the Master. I remember you. I didn't know you time lords could change your gender, too."

"I remember you too, Martha Jones."

"Smith-Jones now. Doctor Smith-Jones."

"This is like old home week. And all very nice, but we have no time. We're about to pick up another load of passengers. I'm going to be busy saving the world, because I'm 'good' now, so I need you lot to manage the incoming."


	19. Chapter 19

**Author's Note:**

If you're curious about the role the Matrix plays in Gallifreyan society, please see fourth Doctor episodes _The Deadly Assassin_ and _The Invasion of Time_. Reviews are always appreciated!

* * *

 _Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

"The disturbance continues, Your Excellency."

Granard, Lord President of the Gallifreyan high council, frowned at his chief advisor, Chancellor Stivy.

"What's the latest?" He finally asked.

The meeting of the high council had been interrupted by the sudden tolling of all the bells in the cloister beneath the citadel. One or two bells tolling rarely happened and indicated a serious threat to Gallifrey or the space/time continuum. All the bells tolling at once had only happened once before in the entire history of Gallifrey. This would not be good news.

"I am in communication with the scientific consortium, which first identified the anomaly and has been monitoring it ever since. There is a large new temporal disturbance in the Milky Way galaxy. Something is causing a drastic change in the quality of matter, and with it a disruption in the space/time continuum. The anomaly is accelerating at an alarming rate. Even though it's happening so far away, if it goes unchecked we will begin to see the effects in our own galaxy in a matter of days. We should suspend all time travel until we know more."

"The consortium is an extremist group. Naturally they would bring this forward as an emerging apocalypse."

"All the same, Excellency, it would be prudent to investigate further, just to be sure. After all, the cloister bells..."

"Yes, yes, I know. Have they identified the source?"

"No, Your Excellency. We don't know why it's happening, but it seems to have originated on or near planet Earth."

The president grunted. "Earth. It seems as if everything happens on Earth. Why is that?"

"Do you think the humans…"

"Of course not! Silly apes!"

"The Doctor is still on Earth, guarding the vault, and its – cargo. We should have him investigate it."

Granard rolled his eyes. "He's probably the cause. At any rate, he's what we've got. Feet on the ground. Arrange communications with his TARDIS."

"As you wish, Excellency."

* * *

 _[So_ you're _Mattingly. I was expecting someone more, I dunno, evolved. And with bigger cleavage.]_

 _I don't know who or what you are, but Kate, Osgood and the one called Nardole are terrified of you. What are your intentions? You'd best be honest._

 _[Oh, you are the little soldier, aren't you? And NOW I see why you're so special. My, what an impressive scar you have, my dear! Straight through the middle of your prefrontal cortex. All those synapses, ruined. What a pity. But look what you got out of it. With your neural architecture, together we can rule the world. Or save it. That part's a little fuzzy.]_

 _You told the one called the Doctor that you would be good. What does that mean?_

 _[…]_

 _You said we can save the world. Prove it._

* * *

The TARDIS materialized around the UNIT staff crammed into the command center just as the structure began to disintegrate out from under them.

Bill and Nardole escorted the newest batch of TARDIS visitors to the expansive lobby area, where Kate and Question Marks had assembled the refugees from Omega's dimension and were proceeding to get them up to speed on current events back on Earth. She was happy to see Bowtie and Captain Mattingly among the UNIT survivors.

What surprised Bill most wasn't these newcomers' reactions to the interior of the TARDIS, but the degree to which their reaction was something she felt internally, rather than heard with her ears. It seemed as if during the short time she and Kate were away from UNIT, everyone had somehow become telepathic.

 _But I must have it too, if I'm hearing them._ As if by osmosis, Bill knew that Bowtie had spoken with Mattingly, and Mattingly and Missy were working up some sort of plan to reverse the damage. Mattingly had stayed behind in the console room when Bill and Nardole led everyone else through the interior door.

Bill also knew from the anonymous stream of consciousness she was now immersed in that currently, thirty five percent of Earth's substance and structure was lost, along with all life in those areas. And still the Doctor's body lay submerged in the tank of blue fluid in the med bay.

Was he alive or dead? Bill didn't know. Either way, he wasn't here when Earth needed him most. When _sh_ e needed him most.

 _Some teacher you turned out to be, Doctor. Get me all enmeshed in this and then do a runner right when things get hard._

Bill wasn't really mad at the Doctor, but it was easier to be angry than to sit with the leaden feeling of grief in her belly.

* * *

The Doctor came to himself in a strange place. It was dark, so he opened his eyes, only to realize that he had no eyes. No eyes to see, no ears to hear, no nose to smell, no mouth to speak. What a strange place, indeed. Strange, and curiously familiar.

 _[Where am I?]_ He thought. To his tremendous relief, he got an answer.

 _You must be new,_ a voice said in his mind. After a few more moments, it continued.

 _You are the Doctor. We recognize you. Welcome, and our condolences._

If the Doctor had been connected to a body, his hearts would have skipped a beat.

 _[Condolences? Am I – did I die? I must be in the Matrix.]_

No answer to that. The Doctor assumed consent.

The Doctor had more experience with the Matrix than most time lords. In his fourth incarnation, during a thankfully brief period when he was inducted as lord president, the Doctor had worn the circlet to link his mind to the Matrix. At the time, he was only in the position in order to foil an enemy who sought to take over Gallifrey and gain control of the time vortex.

While he'd experienced the tremendous power of all the minds inside the Matrix during that encounter, the Doctor hadn't needed to draw upon them. Now, he found himself on the other side of the glass – he was one of the minds in the Matrix.

When he tried to remember his death, memories came flooding back with paralyzing intensity. He didn't explicitly remember dying, but he recalled all the events leading up to what must have been his last few moments. Those final memories were disorganized and fuzzy.

His last clear recollection was of Nardole stooping over him, his face conveying profound shock and concern. Poor Nardole. Poor Bill. The Doctor was sure they would fight valiantly with UNIT to try to stop Omega, but they had no chance whatsoever. Of all the regrets the Doctor had over his unimaginably long lifetime, leaving his friends to deal with the imminent destruction of Earth, and, ultimately, the universe, was by far the worst. Unless…

 _[Hey, who's in charge in here? There's a bit of an urgent situation we need to make the president aware of post haste –]_

 _No one is in charge here. We are all one mind. You will be incorporated over time. And we know the crisis of which you speak._

 _[Then you know it is Omega, working from another dimension to convert matter in ours so he can come through and take it over?]_

The communal voice was silent for quite some time. The Doctor imagined drumming his fingers impatiently on some hard surface.

 _We sensed the temporal disturbance and rang the cloister bells. We know nothing of Omega._

 _[Well, it's him. Believe me. He's got matter he can form and change just by thinking about it. Oh, and he's got an unlimited supply of bohrium, by the way. And his first priority once he's back is to get some payback for being trapped in an anti-matter universe for several millennia. Rassilon, are you in here?]_

Silence from the communal mind.

 _[Well, if you are, answer me this – it's been bugging me since I was a plebe at the Academy. That time with you and Omega, did you intentionally trap him, or was it just an accident? The textbooks didn't say, but they imply –]_

 _Be still, Doctor. We agree we must convey the nature of the disturbance to the president._

 _[Great. And I know I'm new here, and all, but it would be better if you let me tell him. I'm not sure how that works from this end, but I don't think it can be filtered through you lot.]_

 _What do you wish to convey?_

 _[I have a plan. And it will be right up your alley, so to speak.]_


	20. Chapter 20

**Author's Note:**

Sorry for the radio silence. Lots of competing priorities kept me away. While I hope to get the next chapter up sooner, no promises. Thanks for sticking with this story!

* * *

 _Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

The International Space Station orbits the Earth at 254 miles from the planet's surface at 4.76 miles per second. That means that the ISS completes an orbit every 90 minutes, a total of 15.54 orbits per Earth day.

It was on the third orbit of the day that the ISS crew, comprised of seven astronauts from the United States and Japan, were able to see the transformation of conventional matter to something completely different on a large part of the African continent. During the fourth pass, they noted additional conversion on the west coast of North America. By the fifth pass, England was completely absent. In its place was an orange glowing area.

Between the third and fifth orbits, the ISS lost contact with NASA Command, SETI, and also UNIT, but was still in touch with The Japanese and European space agencies.

By the ISS's seventh orbit of the day, all that remained of the unconverted Earth was Antarctica, and it was in the process of conversion when the ISS flew over.

At the end of the seventh orbit, the ISS began to glow.

There was no eighth orbit.

* * *

"Doctor, this is Chancellor Stivy, with Lord President Granard. The Lord President needs a word."

The holographic image popped up suddenly just above several keyboards on the TARDIS console. Missy ignored it. She was busy.

"Doctor?" But when she heard the nasal tenor of "Shortstacks" Granard, her old academy dogsbody, she couldn't not respond.

Missy looked up from where she sat near the console, in a lotus position, directly facing Mattingly. They were holding hands in an effort to intensify their combined energy.

"The Doctor's not in right now. May I take a message?" The time lady soaked up the twin baffled expressions gazing down at her from the holo.

" _Missy?_ "

"I don't understand, Your Excellency," the Chancellor spluttered, "She's supposed to be dead and in the vault. The Doctor's been –"

"Guarding her, I know." Granard looked sternly at Stivy before returning his attention to what was going on in the Doctor's TARDIS.

"Missy, what have you done with the Doctor? And why are you holding a séance in his TARDIS?"

"I haven't 'done' anything with the Doctor. He did it all himself. He's in the Matrix now, poor blighter. If you want to talk to him, Shortstacks, you've got a direct line. And in case you haven't noticed, we've got a bit of a crisis here, so I've got to ring off. Saving the universe, and all that. Thanks for calling!"

Missy disconnected the holo telepathically, directed the TARDIS to ignore all incoming messages, and returned her attention to the connection with Mattingly.

Once they had a strong enough connection with the TARDIS, they would start linking up with everyone on board. If the signal was strong enough, Missy was fairly sure that eventually they would be able to pull in anyone in the galaxy with sufficient telepathy. While apes weren't the best material to work with, Missy was very pleased with how adaptable they were proving to be with exposure to the trans-dimensional matter.

It had been a little difficult tapping into the Doctor's TARDIS. The time machine was so deeply bonded with the daft old fool that she was quite disoriented in his absence. Perhaps it was grief, or maybe just the disruption of a deeply ingrained routine. Missy had to roll up her sleeves and work hard to gain enough of the TARDIS' attention and trust to leverage her considerable psychic energy.

 _[Are you ready, Mattingly? You have the hardest part.]_

 _Ready when you are._

* * *

"Any change?"

Bill looked up as Martha closed the distance between the doorway and where Bill sat next to the tank that held the Doctor. She shook her head.

From the clock on her mobile, Bill knew they had been on the TARDIS, drifting somewhere in space and time for a little over twelve Earth hours. In that time, the Doctor's body floated lifelessly in the blue fluid. Martha and Bill had draped a sheet over much of the tank, so only the Doctor's head and shoulders were visible. While Bill had no interest in the male anatomy, she felt ever so much better sitting next to her mentor without his full nakedness on display.

Some kind of aerator in the tank blasted bubbles periodically. Every time it happened, Bill jumped about a mile. The monitor did not show any vital signs. It just said "Stasis."

Nardole and Question Marks had visited several times, each on their own, as well as Kate, briefly, and Bowtie. Each of their psyches conveyed grief, loss and fear that mirrored Bill's own emotional state. _Emotions feel almost like colors_ , Bill thought.

While Bill still had a steady stream of psychic communication, she'd managed to compartmentalize it enough that she could focus on other things. Over time, she thought she could get used to it and even really enjoy it.

Bill felt much more connected to people, even those she hadn't properly met. There was a sense of community she had always longed for. She felt like she was part of something vast and important. _Maybe I always have been_ , she thought, casting her mind back the epiphany she had the first time she snuck into one of the Doctor's lectures on string theory.

Martha seemed to be the one exception to the telepathic phenomenon. Bill tried repeatedly to reach out to her with this new psychic ability, but couldn't connect with her the way she'd easily connected with everyone else. Other than the sensation of the Doctor's consciousness passing through her and overhearing Missy's communication with the Doctor, Martha was unable to pick up other thoughts and feelings, even when Bill focused entirely on communicating with her telepathically.

While Bill had no success connecting with Martha, there were two "voices" that Bill was pretty sure were Martha's unborn twins. From those, she got an array of very basic emotional content associated with being hungry, uncomfortable, or sleepy. _How lonely for Martha_ , Bill thought. She considered telling the young physician that she could hear her babies, but wasn't sure how it would go over.

Just then, there was another blast of air bubbles in the Doctor's tank. Martha checked the screen, but it didn't show anything new.

"I've been thinking about those air blasts. I don't see why that would be happening if the purpose of this tank was to preserve a dead body. I mean, back on Earth, morgues use cold storage. That would be much simpler for preserving a body than this set up.

"What if this is a suspended animation chamber? Perhaps the Doctor is still alive, but his metabolism is slowed down to the point where he appears to be deceased."

Bill sat up sharply, grasping Martha's theory like a drowning man to a life preserver.

"You think so? Yeah, that would fit. Very sci-fi, but that's the Doctor for you."

"And when the screen said 'uploading,'" Bill finished the thought.

"His mind was being uploaded to the Matrix for safe keeping."

Martha looked at Bill. Bill looked at Martha. They smiled at the same time.

 _Man, I wish you were psychic so we could share this feeling. But I guess we are sharing it, in the normal way._

Bill happily conveyed their working theory to the community of minds on the TARDIS and felt a small wellspring of hope.

* * *

After what seemed an eternity of silence and blankness in this new state of non-being in the Matrix, the Doctor felt the presence of the Lord President.

 _[Granard! My sainted hat! I never in a million years would have pegged you for Lord President.]_

 _Enough, Doctor. I will set aside your egregious flouting of a sacrosanct responsibility in guarding the vault. We will deal with the matter of Missy later, to be sure. I understand you have a solution to propose to the anomaly._

 _[You are aware of what's going on, then.]_

 _Yes, though I doubt the veracity of what I hear. It can't possibly be Omega. We would have known. I grant you it is a strange phenomenon, but it is likely natural. While you've never adhered to it, you know our code of non-interference. If we are not in danger and aren't the direct cause, we must let things go their course. And why are you not fully incorporated into the Matrix?_

 _[I'm the new kid. I understand there is some sort of hazing ritual before they fully let you in. For now, I'm a free agent. And as a free agent, I must tell you where you can stick that non-interference code, Granard. If that's the way you want to play it with this situation, Gallifrey will be gone in a matter of days. The whole universe, for that matter.]_

It took a lot of time and mental energy to convince the stodgy, bull-headed Lord President that he had no choice but to act. He projected mental images of Omega and Omega's universe. Finally, he relayed his memories of his conversation with Omega, and that did the trick.

 _All right, Doctor, I agree we have to act. You say you have a plan. I'd like to hear it._

 _Thank the gods, the idiot sees reason,_ the Doctor thought.

 _[Glad to hear it. A situation like this requires a very 'thoughtful' solution. Get it?]_

 _Don't speak in riddles, Doctor._

 _[Here you've got this massive collective consciousness at your beck and call. The most powerful minds of Gallifrey are in here. Plenty of psychic ability in the offing. Let's use it!]_

 _I still don't-_

 _[No of course you don't, Granard, because you are an idiot, and you have no creativity. But that's okay. Let me spell it out for you. We need to form a telepathic network between the Matrix and everyone else on Gallifrey. We could get help from Karn, too. If we do that, then we can think Omega and his universe right out of existence.]_

 _That's lunacy! Not even possible. The Matrix is intended for the current Lord President's use only. We can't open it up to others._ Especially _the sisters of Karn. Think of the risks of having all of that knowledge available to everyone. No._

 _[Then give me an alternate plan, Granard, or we'll all wink out of existence together, and soon.]_

 _You always were a bully, Doctor. You and the Master always pushing me around. I am Lord President, you know._

The Doctor let Granard stew. He felt the supportive presence of the Matrix surround him, already creating the framework to link minds with every individual on Gallifrey that possessed even a modicum of telepathic ability.

 _Very well, Doctor, but once the crisis has passed, the Matrix must once again become exclusive to the Lord President._

 _[We'll work on the fine print later. Now here's what we need to do…]_


	21. Chapter 21

**Author's Note:**

Here's a short one as we head toward home. Thanks for your patience as I juggle a few real-world things. Starting on 22 and plan to have it to you by end of week.

* * *

 _There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

 _Finally, I am going home, after all these millennia._

Omega made the final preparations for what he considered his grandest experiment. The shell was ready. He was ready.

After some deliberation, Omega decided to transport his entire domain and everything and everyone in it. Why not save the effort of recreating it on Earth? The additional O Matter would also accelerate the conversion.

His initial destination was Earth, which he could feel had reached 100% conversion along with its implausible, oversized moon. As expected, the conversion effect was growing exponentially. How nice.

Omega wondered if the Doctor managed to reach Earth and say goodbye to his pets before he died. Omega knew the Doctor was gone – he'd felt his consciousness wink out of existence. Perhaps he was uploaded to the Matrix, perhaps not. Omega hoped the Doctor died knowing he failed to save his beloved Earth from imminent destruction.

The next phase of the experiment was to arrive on Earth safely. If all went well, Omega would do two things: channel his energy into boosting O Matter transformation, and contact Gallifrey so he could show the evidence of his power well before the O Matter engulfed his old home planet. He wanted the time lords to know what was about to happen to them well in advance.

The ancient being took one last breath of the air on this side of the rift and let it out. Time to go.

* * *

Somewhere in non-space and non-time, the Doctor's consciousness became more closely entwined with the collective mind of the Matrix. He resisted at first, stubbornly holding on to his own identity. He thought he needed to in order to lead the efforts in linking up to all of Gallifrey and focus the collective consciousness on thinking Omega and his "thought dimension" out of existence.

But soon, he realized the collective consciousness did not need a leader – it was already hard at work. It seemed so easy. It felt wonderful to be connected in such a way. He was part of something immense and important. Emotions overwhelmed him – feelings of home and family and acceptance. If only he had felt those things in his early days on Gallifrey, maybe he wouldn't have stolen a TARDIS and headed out into the eternal vastness of the space-time continuum.

His memories of the present that was when he left his body faded. Thoughts of his companions and his cherished Earth receded as he rejoiced in the unity and power of the Matrix.

* * *

At the edge of the rift between two universes, something began to happen. Two things, actually.

Thing one – A massive object, easily the size of a dwarf star, blasted through the rift. The outer surface of the object bloomed with white fire as it punched through and continued on a straight trajectory toward where Earth once was.

Thing two – A thick blue haze formed around the massive interloper. Its velocity was cut in half, then reduced by half again. The haze thickened. Now, instead of hurtling toward Earth, the object drifted lazily in the dense blue haze. Gradually, the haze absorbed the object and it's ancient time lord inhabitant.

Inside the massive trans-dimensional sphere with the hard outer shield and its layer of bohrium, Omega cursed blackly as he felt himself losing cohesion. _It's not fair!_ He wailed as his body disintegrated.

Then there was darkness.

Silence.

And then…

 _[You are Omega. We recognize you. Welcome, and our condolences.]_

 _Whaaat?_

 _You are in the Matrix. Welcome home, brother._


	22. Chapter 22

**Author's Note:**

Happy Friday! Here is 22, with 23 in the works. Thanks for sticking with this story!

* * *

 _Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

 _Just think the world back into existence._

 _[Impossible. There's too much detail. If we do that, I'm not sure what we'll end up with at the end. What if no one remembers the flushing toilets? Condoms? David Bowie?]_

 _Good point. What, then?_

 _[Think the trans-dimensional matter_ out of _existence.]_

 _But what about all the regular matter that's already gone?_

 _[Hmm…not sure. It had to go somewhere, didn't it? I don't think we need to fix that yet. Why don't you get the other apes started on unthinking the new stuff while I look into it?]_

 _Are you kidding me? We've got to-_

 _[Trust me on this one.]_

 _Why should I trust you?_

 _[What options have you got, sunshine?]_

* * *

Bill nudged her way into the crowded gathering area in the TARDIS. She spotted Bowtie and Question Marks and sat cross-legged on the floor between them. Emulating what she saw and felt everyone else doing, she clasped Bowtie's hand on the left and Question Mark's on the right.

She stayed at the Doctor's side for as long as she could, but finally had to join the others. The call was like a fishhook in her brain by then – physically painful to ignore. Bill knew that Martha, who did not hear the communal consciousness, would watch over the time lord.

 _Think it out of existence. This never happened. The ? never existed. Everything is as it was. All is as it should be. The colors were never real. The Earth is as it should be._

It was like hearing a thousand monks chanting inside her head. The feelings were different, the words and mind pictures were not all identical, but they all had the same theme. Underneath it all, Bill could feel/hear the voice/spirit of UNIT Captain Sybil Mattingly, leading the call.

* * *

If anyone on board the TARDIS happened to be looking at a viewer, they would have seen a glowing ball of colorful matter about the size of Earth slowly spreading out to meet the equally colorful glob of what was once the Earth's moon.

If they had stood and watched the image for quite a while, an hour perhaps, they might have noticed that over time, the colors seemed less vibrant, fading from almost impossible oranges, yellows and reds, to more familiar tones of earthy brown, green and blue.

Likewise, if Martha hadn't been looking at a picture of her husband Mickey on her mobile and crying, she would have seen that the monitor next to the Doctor was no longer blank. Gallifreyan symbols spun lazily across the screen, followed by a single word in English.

Downloading.


	23. Chapter 23

**Author's Note:**

I had some down time today and got to really dive back into the story. This chapter is the result, with the skeleton of the next in the works. Reviews are always welcome!

* * *

 _Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

Martha wiped away her tears and blew her nose one more time. She'd been crying for Mickey and Byron, her ten-year-old son. She sat next to the fluid filled tank that sustained the Doctor's body and had succumbed to a moment of weakness while looking through pictures on her mobile. She had to assume they were both gone, but this was not the time for grieving yet. She had a patient.

There wasn't much else to do while waiting for something to change with the Doctor. Everyone else on the TARDIS had come over all psychic and were apparently linked up, trying to reverse whatever had gone wrong with planet Earth.

On top of worrying about the two men in her life as well as her parents, Martha also felt terribly lonely. Why couldn't she hear the others? Was there something wrong with her? She'd felt the Doctor's consciousness as he was uploaded to the Matrix, and she'd overheard Missy's communication with him, but otherwise, nothing.

And leave it to the Doctor to sweep her up in a huge crisis just when she was starting to feel in control of her life.

She had a good job with NHS in the London hospital system. While the pay and working conditions were terrible, Martha enjoyed the challenging cases and the times when she made a noticeable difference in a patient's life.

Mickey settled down into an office job after UNIT. Martha knew he only took it because of their growing family and the need for a stable home life, and appreciated it.

Her last phone exchange with him hadn't gone well. The moment she mentioned the Doctor he was cross and unreasonable. While some of it was a result of the schism between UNIT and Torchwood and the way things played out the last time they saw the time lord, Martha knew it had more to do with residual jealousy from when Mickey and Rose were together and Rose chose to go with the Doctor, rather than stay on Earth with him.

One of the twins suddenly woke up and kicked her a good one in the bladder. When she came back from the loo, she saw the panel next to the Doctor had dancing Gallifreyan symbols, and the blue fluid was draining from the tank.

The symbols converted to English and she saw that they were vital signs. Heart rate and BP were within normal range. His temperature, however, was 20C – frighteningly low, even for a time lord.

When the tank was nearly empty, the Doctor opened his eyes. He didn't register her presence, looking straight ahead, which happened to be the lid of the glass tank. The lid retracted back, pulling the sheet Martha and Bill draped over it along with it. She yanked it clear before it could get caught in the folding mechanism.

The sides of the tank likewise folded into the table. Martha helped the Doctor sit up, and wrapped him in the sheet when he shivered. She listened to his hearts and lungs. The left heart had a slight murmur, but otherwise sounded fine, much improved from before, when it was barely beating. His lungs were clear.

Martha looked for signs of damage from the brain bleed. Upon examination, she noted some left-sided weakness, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before. Perhaps that would get better with time and rehabilitation. Perhaps not.

Martha worried about hypothermia. His lips were blue and his skin cold to the touch. He also wasn't cognitively with it yet. His body shuddered and his teeth started to chatter. She pulled the sheet tighter around him, rubbing his arms and shoulders to get the circulation going.

The monitor next to another piece of equipment beeped and came to life. Martha walked over to read it, and discovered that the piece of equipment was actually a shower stall. The monitor showed a cartoon Martha helping a cartoon Doctor into the shower.

Martha hurried back to the Doctor's side when she saw him trying to stand on his own. And a good thing she got there in time, because he stumbled and nearly fell. She supported him as they made their way over to the shower. She felt him trembling through the sheet.

He climbed in and sat on the bench that seemed to be designed for that purpose. Jets of water came on automatically. The Doctor closed his eyes and let the water course over his body. Martha noticed that the water temperature was listed on the monitor. The Doctor sat in the shower for about fifteen minutes. During that time, the temperature rose from 25C to room temperature. By then, he'd stopped shivering and his lips were no longer blue.

Martha opened a wardrobe next to the shower and discovered stacks of fluffy white towels and neatly folded hospital johnnies. She used a towel to dry him off and then helped him get into a gown.

She led him slowly over to the bed and helped him lie down. While his left leg didn't want to fully support him at least the trembling had stopped, so walking was a little easier.

He still didn't seem to be conscious, though his eyes were open. If he was human and they were in hospital, Martha would assume this was a patient in a twilight state, recovering from anesthesia. Using that as her hypothesis, she talked to him, even though he didn't register or respond to her words.

Time passed. The Doctor's eyes twitched slightly, as if he were waking up or perhaps dreaming.

Suddenly, Martha felt an overpowering swell of emotion. At first it was so intense that she couldn't define what it was. She felt a profound loss and disconnection. And that made sense, given that as far as she knew, her husband and son were dead.

But this was not her first pregnancy, and she had become accustomed to strong emotions as unwelcome guests. Whatever this was didn't feel like it was coming from her or had anything to do with her.

Perhaps it was coming from her patient?

He looked just as disconnected as before, but then she noticed twin tears, one tracking from each eye. She used a tissue to dab them away gently.

"Doctor?"

She didn't expect a response, but then he rolled towards her and placed an icy hand on her belly. She startled. The twins kicked. The Doctor smiled slightly. His eyes were still closed. He dropped his hand and seemed to move away, mentally. The emotional assault abated. Maybe he was going to sleep.

The monitor by the bed displayed the same animation it showed before of Martha using the handheld device to scan his brain. She picked up the device and performed the scan, feeling much more confident with the alien tech than she had less than twenty-four hours ago.

The scan looked good. The area that was dark on the previous scan was now nearly normal. There was a small scar on his parahyppocampal gyrus. Hopefully it wouldn't cause any difficulties. The location of the scar made Martha hopeful that the Doctor would recover from his left-sided weakness.

* * *

Missy stepped into the med bay and immediately spied the pregnant physician sitting by the Doctor's bed. Martha looked up and her eyes sharpened when she saw who it was.

"Leave us," Missy commanded, channeling her most threatening countenance, which she knew was impressive.

"I won't," the earthling said, "He needs me."

Missy laughed.

"Needs you? Really! A two thousand year old time lord needs the help of a May fly. Get serious."

And then Missy heard/felt a presence she'd been missing terribly.

 _Go, Martha. It's okay._

Martha put a hand to her temple, an intense look of concentration on her features.

"Doctor – I heard you! Why is it I can hear you and her, but no one else?"

The Doctor didn't answer. Missy looked at Martha pointedly, and then at the door.

"Very well. But I will be right outside. And you'd better not try anything."

Missy rolled her eyes as the physician left the room, shutting the door behind her.

"I thought she'd never leave."

Finally, she turned and took a good long look at the Doctor, where he lay in the bed, unconscious, and looking very vulnerable. Such a rare thing, to be near him when he wasn't fully on his guard.

She liked this regeneration. This body had character. She liked the weathered features, cross eyebrows and rugged charm. This face told the story of the time war much more eloquently than any of the others he'd worn since the fall of Arcadia.

 _[If I wanted to, I could end it all for you right now. It would take two seconds, and I wouldn't even break a nail.]_

No answer from the Doctor. Missy didn't know if he was receiving her or not. He seemed terribly distant, his body still an empty vessel. What if the TARDIS was wrong, and it turned out he was still in the Matrix? Or only part of his essence returned? What would they have then – a zombie Doctor?

As distasteful as it was, Missy forced herself to clasp his hand. It was much cooler than hers, and dead weight in her own.

 _[Doctor. Talk to me.]_

She waited.

Nothing happened. A lump formed in her throat.

"Come on, Doctor, you're in there. I know it."

This time, she placed her hands at the Doctor's temples and closed her eyes, channeling her energy.

 _[Please, friend, let me know you're alive.]_

And finally, from what felt like very far away, an answer.

… _Missy._

Missy felt a tear slip out. Traitor eyes! She didn't wipe it away, afraid that any movement might break the tenuous connection.

 _[Doctor, I've failed you. I tried to be good. We tried to bring the Earth back, but I can't do it. I was a fool.]_

It was true. Even with Mattingly and an enormous chain of psychic energy from actual inhabitants of Earth, the best they'd been able to do was make the trans-dimensional matter go away. But what floated in its place was basically a great big chunk of dirt.


	24. Chapter 24

**Author's Note:**

It took a little while to do some research for this chapter, but here it is. The reference to block transfer computation is from the fourth Doctor's final episode, entitled _Logopolis_. No need to backtrack and watch that episode unless you want to. As always, reviews are appreciated!

* * *

 _Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

It took a while for Missy to burrow in deep enough to connect with the Doctor's psyche. There was definitely a barrier that wasn't there before. She could barely feel him, and still wasn't sure he was receiving her. Just when she was about to give up, she felt the added presence of the TARDIS.

Warm energy surrounded her and pushed her through the barrier. Thanks to the TARDIS, connecting with the Doctor was a higher fidelity experience than usual. Missy found herself in the old barn back on Gallifrey where the Doctor often stayed as a child. The sun luminesced through the cracks in the wooden construct.

The Doctor sat at a well-aged wooden table. Missy's heart melted when she saw her old friend as she'd first known him – unruly blonde hair, crème-colored skin that flushed alarmingly when he was cross or embarrassed, those great big blue eyes. The younger version of the Doctor was in the process of carving his initials into the wood with the ceremonial dagger they all carried at the academy.

"How did you get here?" He asked.

"With some help. Something's still not right in your head. I could barely reach you without the TARDIS."

"Why are you here?"

"I might ask the same of you."

"It's a good place. I like it."

After a bit more time, he continued.

"Omega came back. I remember. Then I was with the others in the Matrix, and we reversed the rift. Omega got absorbed by the Matrix, and I was sent away."

So, the threat of Omega was neutralized, thanks to the Doctor. _So Typical_ , Missy thought. Even when his brain was damaged, his body was in stasis and his mind in the Matrix, he still found a way to influence events. _Goody two shoes_.

"You went back into your body. The TARDIS uploaded you to the Matrix to protect you while your body healed, and then downloaded you again when it was safe. That's where you are now, in your TARDIS, not far from where Earth used to be."

"Used to be?"

Missy avoided the young Doctor's gaze, instead studying the grain of the wood in the table, with the new adornment of the Doctor's initials in high Gallifreyan.

"Yes. Omega's trans-dimensional matter converted the whole thing. I linked up with the Earthlings on your TARDIS and we reversed the conversion, but now we've just got elemental matter. We've tried everything I can think of, but so far we haven't been able to bring back Earth as it was before. And I'm not sure how long the humans will continue to have telepathy now that the trans-dimensional matter is gone."

"All life is gone?"

"Doctor, _everything_ is gone. The only survivors are here on your TARDIS. And as much as I don't like the smelly apes, they're growing on me."

When Missy looked back at the Doctor, he was no longer her childhood playmate, but the surly gray haired Scottish edition he'd assumed in his latest regeneration.

And he was smiling.

"You know how to fix it."

"Yes, I do."

"Well, what, then?"

"Block transfer computation."

"Are you kidding me? That's really old school. Who has time for all that math?"

"Hey, don't knock the math. I like the math."

"Well, you're the only one, then. We'd have to go to Logopolis to have it done properly, and it will take a bit of time."

"No, and no. If it were any planet other than Earth, that would be true. But we've got an advantage. The TARDIS has the data map."

Missy considered this statement as she absently rifled through what the TARDIS now made available to her. The little bitch had the answer all along, but withheld it from her. _We'll just see who doesn't get her drive stacks overhauled, then. Teach you to play favorites_ , she thought.

"She formed the data map over all your visits to Earth."

"That's right."

At this point, the TARDIS broke in and conveyed, somewhat haughtily, that she had also hacked all of the Earth satellites as well as the ISS as soon as she detected the matter transformation.

 _I am surrounded by showoffs._

The TARDIS also conveyed that she needed the Doctor to channel the data map into the communal consciousness comprised of Missy and the humans in order to transform the unconverted matter of Earth back into the living, breathing, bustling blue planet it once was.

* * *

Martha steered the wheelchair carrying the Doctor toward the console room, followed closely by Missy. She'd been summoned back to the Doctor's bedside by a surly command from the time lady.

While Martha didn't appreciate being ordered around by someone who had, until recently at least, been the Doctor's evil nemesis and deadly enemy of Earth, she came right away. She was pleased to see the Doctor sitting on the edge of the bed, his spindly legs dangling a few inches above the floor.

"Well, don't just stand there, do something with him."

Martha took a measured breath, working hard to manage her reaction.

"Would you like me to do anything in particular?"

Missy looked flustered. A fine flush appeared across each delicate cheekbone.

"Make sure he's okay to move. Then we need to take him to the console room."

Martha stepped in front of the Doctor. While his eyes were open, it took a few moments for him to register her presence. At last, he looked her in the eye.

"Doctor? Is it okay if I examine you?"

Again, there was a slight delay in his response, but finally he nodded slightly.

Martha pulled out her penlight and checked out his pupils, which were equal and reactive.

She pulled up the NHS stroke scale on her tablet and navigated to the questions for assessing the level of consciousness.

"Doctor, you had a cerebral vascular accident, but you seem to have recovered nicely. I'm going to ask you some questions and I need you to answer so I can determine if there is any damage we need to work on. Okay?"

Martha heard Missy's impatient sigh.

"Is this really necessary? We've got a crisis right now, so can you move things along?"

"Maybe you should step outside so you don't distract him and throw off the tests."

That earned her another angry huff. Martha kept her focus on her patient. Missy didn't leave. Martha continued the exam.

"Okay Doctor, can you tell me how old you are?" The Doctor's expression turned puzzled.

"Huh! Well, that's not a fair question. How's he supposed to answer that? He's a time traveler."

Martha ignored Missy. Again, there was that brief hesitation before the Doctor answered.

"Two thousand or so. Maybe more."

Martha smiled when the words came out fairly clearly. He slurred his words slightly, and she noticed some minor asymmetry of his mouth.

"I've got to say, Doctor, you look great for your age." That earned her a huff of laughter and a grin. The slightly twisted smile was further evidence of slight facial paralysis.

"What month is it, Doctor?" The time lord produced the correct month. Martha wasn't sure that would be a fair question, but she'd learned from Bill Potts that the Doctor was currently Earth-bound, and had been for quite some time.

"That's right. Now I'd like you to open and close your eyes for me."

The Doctor completed the task easily. Likewise, he was able to grip and release her hand. When he did it with his left hand, though, his grip was noticeably weaker than his right.

Martha proceeded with a visual field test and motor arm and leg tests, which confirmed the left-sided weakness. At least it was only mild, and should be easily remedied with rehabilitation.

When she moved on to the limb ataxia test, Missy finally could take no more.

"Alright, that's enough of that. Clearly he's well enough for a short jaunt to the console room. Help me get him into this wheelchair."

And that's how they ended up in the hallway, en route to the console room.

Martha spied the door they were looking for just up ahead, but when they approached, she was surprised to see a large expansive lounge area off to their right that she was sure wasn't there before. Perhaps she'd been so focused on the Doctor when she passed it on the way to the clinic that she hadn't noticed, but during her previous tenure on the TARDIS the only thing on that side of the hallways was the loo.

Even more surprising was the fact that the new lounge area was packed end to end with people. They were sitting in chairs along the wall. They were also sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding hands. Everyone's eyes were closed, or nearly closed. To Martha, it looked like the biggest sleepover party or séance on record. _This must be the hive mind_ , she thought.

Then, she felt a sharp prod in the middle of her back.

"Keep moving! Yes, that's the communal consciousness. They're resting now. They're waiting for me to rejoin and tell them what to do next, so chop chop."

Martha wasn't surprised when the time lady did not step around her to open the door so she could push the Doctor neatly into the console room. Instead, she had to turn the wheelchair sideways so she could open the door herself and back the wheelchair in. While pregnant with twins, mind you. _Nice_.


	25. Chapter 25

**Author's Note:**

Definitely in the home stretch now – I anticipate another 1-2 chapters, which I will try to get up more quickly than this one. Thanks for your patience, and for sticking with this story!

* * *

 _Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

It took a few moments for the Doctor to orient himself to the console. Everything looked familiar, but somehow different. Then he realized that he was seeing everything from a different perspective, since he was seated in the wheelchair.

It took some additional time to recognize the telepathic interface. He was looking right at it, but his brain had trouble translating what he was seeing into what it meant. Most irritating.

To compound his frustration, when he tried to stand and walk over to it, Martha got in his way and restrained him. Apparently, she wanted him to stay in the chair. Once he conceded, she rolled him over to it.

In the meantime, Missy seated herself dramatically on the floor next to a human the Doctor had never met, but suspected was Sybil Mattingly. He smiled a little as he watched Missy mentally prepare herself and then grudgingly clasp both of Mattingly's hands and close her eyes, easing back into the communal consciousness.

"Doctor?"

He became aware that Martha had been speaking to him and turned his attention to her. She wore a concerned look that reminded the Doctor that she was here in the capacity of physician, and right now he was her resident patient.

"Do you need anything? Are you feeling okay?"

Again, there was that painful lag as he parsed through what she'd asked and searched for his answer.

"Yes. Fine. Need to focus now." His words didn't come out exactly the way he expected, but close enough for her to catch his drift. He closed his eyes and sank his hands into the warm, yielding surface of the telepathic interface with a sigh.

He opened his mind. It was hard. He sensed an impediment that he didn't put there. He felt surrounded by the TARDIS, and took a few measured breaths as he cleared his mind.

He let go of his concerns about the destruction of Earth and its uncertain future. He cast aside the deep sense of loss he felt now that he was no longer in the Matrix. He breathed and turned his attention away from the strangeness in his head that made it hard to interpret and respond to things and toward the trickle of a babbling brook.

The sound of running water became louder, its force stronger. He could feel cool, humid air and springy vegetation under his feet. He imagined himself on the bank of a flowing river. The water wasn't running anymore, it was rushing. There were whitewater rapids. Water foamed around the odd boulder, the fallen tree. The energy of the river vibrated up from the ground. It made him giddy. His stomach rolled.

He suddenly felt the intensity of the experience lessen. As it did he noticed that something deep inside his head ached. It felt like a muscle that hadn't been called on to do much recently that was suddenly put through all of its paces. It hurt, but it also felt good. Healthy, even.

The Doctor knew the water was really data, flowing through him from the TARDIS to Missy and her network of temporarily psychic humans. And just like that, he imagined himself hundreds of meters above Earth, looking down at its entire history.

He'd been there for a lot of it, popping in on significant events, sometimes just to watch, others to make some minor adjustment to keep things from falling to entropy, or repair the time stream. Sometimes, he stayed for decades, like his most recent tenure in early twenty-first century, Bristol.

As he remembered the fine blue planet he'd visited so often, and all the people he loved so dearly, he welcomed the powerful emotions that arose. They were good. They anchored him back to reality and helped assuage the loneliness of not being in the Matrix anymore. He found himself descending back to the riverbank, feeling lighter, and more energized.

And then he heard someone calling to him from further downstream. It was Missy. He strained to hear her over the roar of the water. The more he concentrated, the easier it was to understand.

"Missy, where are you?" He called out. In this place his mind had created with the help of the TARDIS, he had no trouble getting the words out. There was a brief pause, and then he heard her response.

"You're getting stronger! I can feel it. You're doing fine. Keep the data coming!"

And Missy sounded closer to him, too.

The river was overflowing its banks. Then it was an ocean, with tides. As the ocean moved and waves broke on the shore, the Doctor felt a cascade of excitement, jubilation, hope. He felt Missy beside him, having the same powerful emotions. She clasped his hand.

"It's working, Doctor. This is going to work!"

* * *

And slowly, it began to happen. That giant hunk of dirt rotating in a remote spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy began to glow. Then, it began to spin faster. And faster, still. It glowed brighter.

Suddenly, a large ejection of orange glowing matter split off from the globe and coalesced into a smaller globe. Other smaller ejections began happening.

Over time, the largest spinning globe began to slow. The orange glow abated. If anyone had been watching from, say, the view screen on a type 40 TARDIS frozen in the shape of an English Police Call Box, they would have seen a nice blue planet with generous patches of green and brown. If a resident of the planet Earth happened to be looking, they would have recognized it as home. The familiar over-sized moon danced around it like a lover. Man-made satellites, a very large space station, and a worrisome collection of abandoned space junk whizzed by in near-earth orbit.

As the Earth rotated on its axis, the side facing the TARDIS was cast into shadow. Martha's eyes welled with tears when she saw what could only be vast electrical lighting on the surface of the planet, illuminating the inhabited areas.

* * *

In Ghana, Africa, professor Emanuel Okyne folded his paper, left a generous gratuity on the table, and exited the coffee shop, en route to his first botany lecture of the day. His mind was on ways to make the subject of mushroom spores engaging for this term's incumbent freshmen. As the door swung shut behind him, Doctor Okyne, the shop, and everyone on the busy sidewalk and street were quickly engulfed in a thick cloud of impossibly bright color. In what seemed like the next moment, Okyne collided with something solid yet yielding and felt his newspaper slip out of his hand. The street was back. The sidewalk was back. The people were back, and he had just collided with the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.

In Berkeley, California, Joe Valardi had been driving the red line bus full of passengers when the colors appeared and wiped him away. Suddenly, he reappeared to find the bus was fine and he was hurtling down the road at 60 MPH with a bunch of screaming passengers. For a moment he swerved into the other lane and nearly collided with a flatbed truck towing portable toilets, but managed to yank the wheel back just in time.

In London, Mickey Smith was on the West London Free Primary School bleachers, watching Byron deftly move the football down the field toward the opposing team's goalkeeper. Suddenly everything around him faded out in an orange-red haze. But then, moments later, he was back. The kids were on the field. In the two seconds that Mickey's attention was distracted by the weird colors, Byron scored the winning goal.


	26. Chapter 26

**Author's Note:**

Here's the final chapter of Convergence with a post script to follow shortly. Thanks so much for reading!

* * *

 _Our separation from each other is an optical illusion of consciousness._

-Albert Einstein

* * *

The human passengers tumbled out of the TARDIS, incredibly grateful to be back on Earth. They had landed in Osgood's lab, which was reassuringly solid and normal looking. Captain Blakely knelt down stiffly to kiss the floor, only to be found and helped up by Mattingly.

"You did it, Sybil – you got us home. Thank you so much!" Mattingly hugged the elderly captain, thinking of how just about a week ago when they were the same age.

Back in the console room of the TARDIS, the Doctor drooped in his wheelchair. His head rolled loosely on his neck. Clearly, the data transfer used up all of his reserves.

Missy was so relieved to be back in contact with her one and only friend. She felt the barrier between their two psyches burn away during the data transfer. Apparently, the TARDIS knew more about the rehabilitative value of psychic exercize than Missy did. The time lady ignored the departing humans and knelt by the Doctor's chair.

 _[Rest, friend. I will take care of you.]_

 _Mmm…_

 _[(laughing) You're funny when you're sleepy!]_

 _Shut up. And get back in the vault before Nardole finds you and does something rash._

But apparently, one of the annoying apes hadn't left. The pesky pregnant one in the white coat cleared her throat, looking pointedly at the Doctor and then back to Missy.

"Well, don't just stand there looking like a beached whale. He needs a good lie-down. C'mon, shake a leg – got to get him back to bed. And you call yourself a doctor!"

* * *

"Bill!"

"Nardole."

The Delloran approached her somewhat tentatively. Bill forced herself not to step away from him. He seemed his usual chipper self, but she hadn't forgotten those few weird moments on the TARDIS when he'd been pretty awful to her.

"Sorry about how things went the last time we were together. It wasn't me. Really. I mean, it _was_ me, but I wasn't in charge of me at the time."

"You're not being very clear. All I know is you pushed me and treated me like a minion. Not cool, Nardole."

"I know, and I really am sorry. But Missy was in my head. I was really just along for the ride. Never was any good at head stuff."

Bill reached out tentatively with her mind. Nardole was one of the few people on the TARDIS Bill didn't just automatically sense through the telepathic connection. He was there, but he was dim, somehow. After a little probing, she concluded that he really was sincere.

"Well, alright, then. I forgive you." His relieved smile eliminated any lingering doubt she had about him.

Together, they made their way back to the TARDIS in search of the Doctor. Bill knew where to find him through the diminishing telepathic connection. But when she opened the bedroom door, she saw that Question Marks had beat them to it. "Sorry," Bill whispered, shutting the door again before Nardole could see who was there.

"He has a visitor. Hey, I'm starving, how about you? Why don't we pop down to the UNIT canteen?"

* * *

The Doctor awoke to find an Osgood sitting beside his bed, fiddling with her mobile. _At last, one mystery cleared up_ , he thought.

"You."

"Yes, it's me."

"I know which one you are, now. You visited me when I was in a healing trance. You're Bonnie." The Osgood looked down and smiled shyly.

"That's right. But no one can ever know that, Doctor."

"Then why did you let down your psychic barrier? You knew I would figure it out."

"Couldn't help it. That trans-dimensional matter affected me too, you know. For a while there, we were all connected."

"So, it's fading now?"

"Yes, nearly gone. I can't link up with my sister anymore, and I'm sad about that. She really is just as wonderful as I thought. Even more wonderful."

"So, the human thing is working out for you. I'm glad."

"Doctor, I wanted to thank you. You were patient with me when I wasn't very pleasant to deal with. If it weren't for you, I don't want to think about what would've happened."

"But you listened. And you grew up, Bonnie. Look where you are now. You add so much value to Earth – preserving the partnership between zygons and humans."

"I think I get more than I give. Anyway, thanks."

* * *

Bill sat in the back row of the lecture hall, listening as the Doctor expounded upon the possibility of extra dimensions in the context of M-theory. Bill thought it a timely topic, given current events. Sadly, she knew she was probably the only person in the room other than the Doctor who remembered the bizarre but brief period when Earth intersected with matter from another dimension.

He had only recently returned to active teaching after a few weeks off for physical therapy with one or two covert adventures in the TARDIS with Bill wedged in. When he was very tired, Bill could detect a slight limp and occasional slurring of his words, but otherwise, he seemed fully recovered.

Bill reflected back on the first few days after the trans-dimensional experience. That feeling of being connected to everyone faded quickly. When she realized it was completely gone, she fell into a funk. She felt alone and isolated again. But then, she caught up with her friend Shireen and felt better. While it wasn't the same as having a continuous telepathic connection, Bill found that reaching out to other people definitely filled the void.

Since they'd returned, Bill and Moira butted heads even more than usual. Shireen raised the idea of going in on a flat and Bill was excited at the possibility. She'd considered asking the Doctor if she could move into the TARDIS, but sensed a boundary there that she didn't want to cross. Plus, that would just be weird. She loved him, but he was so old. And alien. And male.

Bill was pretty sure he visited the vault at least daily, perhaps more. She'd asked him about Missy and received only monosyllabic answers. Clearly, he didn't want to talk about it.

Bill's attention was hooked back into the lecture hall when the Doctor posited the idea of a dimension of pure thought. Bill smiled a little at the discussion that ensued. It seemed her fellow students thought it implausible, if not ridiculous. _If only they knew what we accomplished when we were all connected on the TARDIS_ , she thought. And she remembered the wonder of that feeling of being a small but important part of something so powerful and good, of all working together towards one vital purpose. _Why can't it always be that way?_

She looked out again at the crowded lecture hall at her fellow humans and knew. _We're individuals, that's why. Independent spirits. We're unique and separate. And that can be lonely. But at least I know now that we're really not all that different. And if I want to, I can find ways to bring people closer together and create that connection._

She jotted that thought down in her notebook, realizing that it was probably what the Doctor wanted her to learn from her most recent 3,000-word essay assignment.


	27. Chapter 27

**Post Script:**

Special thanks for Steven Moffat, Peter Capaldi, and the wonderful cast and crew of Doctor Who for providing such a creative, thought provoking and engaging universe. I enjoyed creating a little season 10 side-trip to keep us occupied until the upcoming Christmas special.

Thanks also to those steadfast readers who stuck with this story all the way through in spite of some pretty thin science, and, in some chapters, pretty thick detail. I appreciated the follows, favorites and reviews along the way – they encouraged me, inspired me, and lit up my world.

I will likely curate this story to reduce or eliminate continuity errors, implausible dialogue, and the inevitable spelling, grammar and punctuation faux pas, and would appreciate input on things you noticed that need fixing or things you particularly liked. I hope to continue writing fan fiction, and appreciate feedback that helps me grow as a writer. You can post it as a Comment or PM me. Much appreciated!

Yours truly,

Instant Dragon


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